


High Turnover

by CGWicks



Category: Five Nights at Freddy's
Genre: Gen, Horror, Murder Mystery, Mystery, Supernatural Elements, Suspense
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-30
Updated: 2020-08-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 21
Words: 35,651
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23402083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CGWicks/pseuds/CGWicks
Summary: 'Just as he reached the bathroom door, Mike heard a quiet, brief whirring sound from the stage.  He shone his light towards it and his heart skipped a beat when he saw Chica the chicken looking directly at him.  So, they are active, he thought.'Mike Schmidt has just started his job as night watchman at Freddy Fazbear's Pizza. He thought the job would be cushy.  He was wrong.
Comments: 17
Kudos: 115





	1. 1 & 2

** High Turnover **

**‘A Five Nights at Freddy’s Fan Fiction’**

**C.G. Wicks**

** Part 1: Five Nights at Freddy’s **

**1**

“So, Mr. Schmidt, are you available for an immediate start?”

Shifting uncomfortably in his seat opposite the manager interviewing him, Mike Schmidt was struck by the not too subtle urgency of this question. The manager looked back at him fixedly, knowing that if Mike wasn’t available, he had a list of other applicants he could call. The sudden vacancy of the night guard position had added more stress to his already busy workload, and though he usually had no problem finding applicants for this entry-level job, he wanted to be done with it as quickly as possible. The night guards never lasted more than six months, but they usually hung around for at least a few. Most of the time. The manager was in his forties, but years of stress had added prematurely earned lines and features to his face. The dull glow of the fluorescent light humming above them in the small office didn’t help with his vaguely haggard appearance. Mike didn’t expect such a quick start, but he didn’t have many other options. And beggars can’t be choosers. He had recently moved to Hurricane after having to drop out of college and had been looking for work for a few weeks now, and not having many marketable skills was working against him. He was getting desperate, and this was the first job that had accepted his application. It also had a minimal skill requirement. All it really needed was a willingness to work nights. 

“Sure,” Mike replied, slightly dismayed at the sudden loss of his normal life routine and sleep schedule. He wanted to work, but he knew that he would miss his free time. “I can start tonight.” 

“Great!” The manager forced a smile and leaned back into his chair. “One more thing. Many of the previous night guards have reportedly gotten spooked by our animatronics during their shifts. I just want to say that even during the night, this place is still just a family restaurant. Those characters up on the stage are just animatronics. You don’t find them creepy, do you?”

“No, that won’t be a problem for me,” Mike replied. He had glimpsed the animatronic mascots on his way through the restaurant as he followed the manager to his office, though he hadn’t paid them much attention. The restaurant had been busy with wait staff rushing around with their oversized pizzas, carrying them to tables crowded with young families celebrating a birthday. The place was abuzz with noise and awash with colours of the many balloons reaching in vain for the ceiling from the chairs they were tied to. Even now in the office at the end of this corridor, he could hear the joyful music muffled through the walls. Hopefully, for the staff’s sake, the music didn’t play all day.

“Excellent,” replied the manager. “Well, I think we’re done here. We’ll need you here at 10:00pm tonight. Just use the front door and ask for Fritz. He’ll be the one training you.” The manager stood and gave a quick curtesy handshake before leading Mike back out of the office to the main restaurant.

The smell of pizza wafted through the air as he made his way through the restaurant to the front door. The volume of the party music and the yelling children running across the red and purple tiled floor was almost overwhelming. This time as he walked through, he paused to get a good look at the animatronics up on the stage. 

There were three of them, all dancing stiffly and jaggedly to the music coming from the speakers above them in a poor synchronisation, repeatedly breaking the illusion that they were the ones playing the songs. Not that any of the wide-eyed, awe-struck children minded. All the animatronics were quite big, at least six feet tall and surprisingly imposing, even from across the room. The one on the left was a blue rabbit playing a red bass guitar that matched the big red bow tied around its neck. In the middle and standing closer to the front of the stage was a brown bear wearing a black top hat matching his own black bow tie. This one was singing into a microphone held in its hand. On the right in line with the rabbit was a yellow chicken wearing a bib with the words LET’S EAT written on it. This one held a serving tray with a prop cupcake on it. All three of them looked like they had been performing for many years, the colours of their matted fur faded to dull hues of what they used to be in their heyday. All of them wore an expression on their blank faces that was somewhere between a big, toothy smile and a vicious snarl. All the animatronics’ eye sockets looked slightly too big for the eyes resting within them, giving their heads a skull-like quality. Their heads turned quickly back and forth, their eyes seeming to look out over the crowd of diners and staff. The chicken’s eyes landed briefly on Mike and seemed to really see him for a moment before looking away at the crowd again.

Mike now appreciated what the manager had said to him. Much to his annoyance, he did find them creepy. They were creepy. Not that any of the children minded.

***

It was mid-afternoon when Mike arrived back at his apartment. He lived in a small, old, one-bedroom place that was barely furnished. On his current budget, the choice of rentals was the same as the choice of jobs. And on this budget, he would be taking the bus to and from work for a while. The front door opened into the lounge room which had an attached kitchen in the far right-hand corner, which was separated by a small counter. A door on the left led to the bedroom and a door directly opposite the front door led to the bathroom. Mike looked around grimly and considered his…hopefully…temporary living situation. Beggars can’t be choosers. Finally, he would have a proper income to get him back on his feet and back on track. Hopefully, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza would be the solution. Though, he felt a pang of dread at the thought that he may not see a full day of sunlight again for quite some time, most likely at the gradual cost of his relationships.

The clock on the wall ticked loudly as it counted down until his first shift, and at only 4:10pm, all Mike could think to do was try to lay down and catch up on some sleep that he didn’t need yet, but sleep that he would be losing in the next few days. But with nervousness at the new job creeping in, he knew that would be next to impossible. Figuring that his shifts in the small hours would be quite slow and uneventful, Mike decided to peruse his modest collection of books that were stacked up in a row along the wall next to his bed in search of one to bring with him. How busy could this job actually be? He might even be able to have a nap every now and then. After putting his chosen book into his backpack, he lied down onto his bed and set his alarm and waited, listening to the ticking clock and the occasional car driving down his street. 

Mike had been sitting on the edge of his bed for some time already when the alarm sounded at 8:00pm. With a groan, he slowly stood up and raised his arms in a stretch. After eating a microwave dinner and having a quick shower, he grabbed his backpack and headed out the front door into the night towards the bus stop.

The red brick restaurant stood shadowed beyond the dimly lit parking lot, with only a few lights still on inside. There were no cars parked in the customer parking lot and Mike’s steps echoed loudly across the bitumen as he walked. This scene was a stark contrast to the busy restaurant that had greeted him earlier in the day when he had made this same walk. It had been loud and jovial with bright lights and cheerful families. Now, the difference was eerie. 

The front door stood to the left of the main wall under a flickering light, looming as Mike approached it. He knocked on the door and waited as he listened to a pair of footsteps moving closer towards him from the inside. The door opened and the pale face of a cleaning lady appeared from the shadows. 

“Hello,” Mike said. “I’m the new night guard. Is Fritz here?”

**2**

Mike stood at the front door of the restaurant waiting to be let in. The cold night air was beginning to get to him. The cleaning lady, a thin, middle-aged woman with grey hair looked him up and down for a moment surveying him. With no change in her expression, she kept her eyes on him as she turned her head slightly to call out behind her. 

“Fritz!” Mike jumped as she barked the word with surprising volume. “The new guy’s here.” A second set of footsteps approached the front entrance as a man appeared behind the cleaning lady. Finally, she broke her gaze as she turned to return to her task. “Three weeks,” she said to Fritz as she passed by him. Fritz stepped into the light of the doorway and gestured for Mike to come in. He was a tall, lean man with dark combed hair and large glasses. The greying hair on the sides of his face suggested that he was in his mid-thirties. “Welcome, I’m Fritz”

Mike stepped in out of the cold night air and took in his surroundings. Now that the place was empty, he could see all of the details more clearly. They were standing in the main dining room, a large square room with many doors and doorways leading from it. Rows of long tables covered with silvery white tablecloths filled the room and each table had a row of party hats lined along them, ready for the next birthday boys and girls to claim for the day. The walls were lined with pages and pages of scrawled drawings of anthropomorphised bears, bunnies and chickens all serving pizzas to the stick figure children. Along the wall on Mike’s left was the door to the bathrooms and further down on the back wall, opposite the entrance, were the double swinging doors to the kitchen with their circular windows showing only darkness within. To the right of them were three dark doorways, the centre one being the widest. The two outer ones were corridors leading away to darkness. The right one, Mike remembered, led to the manager’s office down the end on the right. The larger doorway in the middle, Mike could see from the faint metallic reflections of the arcade machines, was the entrance to the games room. In the next corner to the right of these was what looked like a small, circular stage at ground level with large, purple curtains drawn closed. A sign that read OUT OF ORDER stood in front of it. Further to the right was a door to the backstage area with EMPLOYEES ONLY written on it. 

To their immediate right along the front wall, opposite the hallways, was the main stage. The three mascot characters were standing there, all frozen and inactive, staring straight ahead at the empty room in front of them. Mike couldn’t decide if they were creepier this way or when they were moving. Fritz walked to the centre of the room and gestured towards the three mascots on the stage.

“Let me introduce you to the gang! The one on the left is Bonnie. Bonnie the bunny, get it? The chicken on the right is Chica…because she’s a chicken. And the big happy fellow in the middle is Freddy Fazbear himself.” Fritz turned towards the mascots. “Say hi, gang!” Mike watched the characters closely as he half expected them to actually move in response, but they appeared to be turned off, staring vacantly at the wall behind them.

“Right,” continued Fritz. “Your shift starts at 10:00pm. That gives you two hours to do the bulk of the jobs that you need to do. Jen is usually finished with the cleaning by 10:30pm. She’s the nice lady you met just before. Once she’s out the door it’s just you here and then you can start making sure all of the doors are locked. We don’t want our favourite characters wandering down the street at night. You should do one round when you start and another no later than 11:30pm. You’ll want to get yourself into the office before midnight, so make sure you don’t need to go to the bathroom or anything like that. Also, you’ll want to get yourself a watch and set it to the clock in the office.” They began walking down the left-hand corridor past more paper lined walls, many of children’s drawings, others of old newspaper clippings about the restaurant.

“They can’t actually get out, can they? Out of the building, I mean,” Mike asked.

“Oh, no. Their programming doesn’t allow them to leave the restaurant. But uh, the animatronic characters here do get a bit…quirky at night. But do I blame them? No. If I were forced to sing the same stupid songs for twenty years and I never got a bath… yeah, I’d probably be a bit irritable at night, too.” Fritz stopped walking and gave Mike a stern look. “So, just be aware. The characters do tend to wander a bit. They’re left in some kind of free roaming mode at night. Something about their servos locking up if they get turned off for too long. They used to be allowed to walk around during the day, too. But then there was the Bite of ’87. Yeah, it’s amazing that the human body can live without the frontal lobe, you know?” 

Mike was speechless as Fritz led him towards a door on the right at the end of the hallway and opened it. Inside was a small office with another door on the opposite side. Each door had a frosted wire mesh window in the top half. There was a desk on the right with a large monitor on it, a dark grey image flickering intermittently on the screen. Mike entered the room and Fritz closed the door behind them. 

“Okay,” Fritz started, “So, concerning your safety. The only real risk to you as a night watchman here is the fact that if these characters happen to see you after hours, they probably won’t recognise you as a person. They’ll most likely see you as a metal endoskeleton without its costume on. Now, since that’s against the rules here at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, they’ll probably try to…forcefully stuff you inside a Freddy Fazbear suit. So, to help prevent that, we have these locks.” Fritz gestured to the doors, pointing out the large metal beams that stretched across the middle of the doors. “They’re electronic and are operated with the switch on the desk. If you need to lock the left door, you press the left button and the right button for the right door. They work instantly and effectively. These characters used to get through the doors fairly easily when they wanted to, but rather than fix their programming, the guys in upper management figured it was cheaper to reinforce the doors. But hey, baby steps, right?”

Fritz walked to a metal locker that stood at the back of the office, opposite the desk. Next to it was a small bar fridge and a microwave sitting on a bench. Fritz opened the locker and pulled out a large brown Freddy head. 

“When I used to work the night shift at the old location, I wore this when the characters got too close. It got me out of trouble more than a few times.” Fritz set the head down on the desk next to the monitor. “Management don’t know I have this here, so put it back in the locker at the end of each shift. Now, with the doors, you don’t want to switch both of the locks on at the same time or else you’ll blow the fuse. And the fuse box is back outside, down the other corridor opposite the storage closet. When that happens, I recommend wearing the head.” 

Fritz checked his watch and opened the door behind him to leave, then paused with his hand still on the doorknob. “Look, to be honest. You’ll be fine. They don’t really move around all that much. You just have to keep an eye on them with the cameras and if one of them starts wandering too close, just flick the switch to lock the door. And don’t worry about having to do regular rounds every hour or anything like that. The night guard position here is really more of an insurance thing. Just don’t leave this office after midnight and only come out once the characters are back in their proper places. Their night mode ends at 6:00am.” Fritz stepped through the door and began to pull it shut behind him. “Oh yeah, and don’t forget to keep an eye on Foxy. That one was always a bit twitchy.”

Before Mike knew it, Fritz was gone, and he was left overwhelmed with questions. Mostly about this bite from ten years ago. The heavy locks on the doors were unsettling due to how large they were. They looked strong enough to keep out a battering ram. Mike looked around the office and accustomed himself with his surroundings. Now that Fritz had left, he noticed just how quiet the restaurant was, and he was acutely aware of the hum of the computer in front of him and of the fridge behind him. The small desk fan sitting just above the monitor would surely add its own hum once it was turned on, and all three would probably make it difficult to hear anything coming down the corridors. He sat down and pulled the chair up to the desk and looked closely at the monitor. The camera showed the main stage from the left-hand side, slowly panning left and right. All of the characters were still there, motionless. A dull bang rang out through the building as Jen left through the front door. Only the security lights remained on, giving the place a dull grey hue, masking the many bright colours seen during the day. Mike looked at the digital clock on the desk next to the monitor. It was only 10:30pm. He had a long night to go.


	2. 3

**3**

At 11:15pm Mike set the book he had been reading down on the desk and looked at the screen. The mascots were all still there, unmoving. He stretched his arms high above his head, joints popping and crackling as he did, and he prepared to do his first …and only… round for the night. He picked up the flashlight from the desk that he had found earlier in the locker with some old, spare batteries, clicked it on and off a few times, then stood to leave the office. Leaving through the same door that he and Fritz had used, Mike accidently slammed the door hard behind him. The sound seemed to cut offensively through the thick, established silence of the place, and for a moment he felt as though he had disturbed some sacred site. Walking quietly down the corridor towards the main dining room, flashlight beam cast downwards in front of him, Mike felt reluctant to actually step out into the main room. Where they would see him. 

Mike stood at the doorway and shone his light towards the stage. Large shadows loomed behind the animatronic mascots as they stood staring into oblivion. Though they remained unmoving, Mike could almost feel a presence from them. Not taking his eyes off the large characters, he stepped to his right towards the kitchen and pushed the doors inwards as he entered. He flicked the switch on the wall and the lights flashed on brightly, causing him to squint as his eyes adjusted to the sudden glare. Large stainless-steel benches ran along the walls of the long room on either side, and a long steel table lay between them. One side was crammed with crockery and utensils, the other side lined with piles of plates. A large pizza oven sat at the far end of the room, its opening dark and menacing. The faint smell of pizza still lingered in the air as Mike walked through the long kitchen and past the freezers to the back door. After confirming that it was locked with one firm rattle, he turned and headed back to the swinging double-doors and turned off the light. Next was to check the bathroom, then the front door.

The rest of his checks went as smoothly as the first one and each time he had to walk past the stage in the main room, his unease about the characters there seemed to lessen. The front door was locked fast and the place was empty, Jen the cleaning lady wasting no time and having left shortly after his arrival. Walking back towards his office down the other corridor, he paused as he passed the smaller side stage. A sign above the purple curtains read PIRATE COVE _. Keep an eye on Foxy._ This must be where he was. Surely, Mike thought, as this attraction was out of order, presumably awaiting repair, there was nothing to keep an eye on here. He thought briefly of pulling the curtain aside and having a look at what was behind it, but not yet wearing a watch, he wasn’t sure how much time he had left to loiter before the characters entered their free roaming mode. It seemed best to just go back to the office and watch from the cameras. Mike walked down the corridor, passing between a storage room on his right and the fuse box on his left and entered his office on the left, opposite the manager’s office. 

The clock on the desk read 11:30pm and the nerves in his stomach lurched as midnight drew nearer. Mike sat back down at the desk, put the flashlight down next to the Freddy head and picked up his book, not taking in the story as his eyes kept flicking back up to the stage on the screen.

***

As soon as the digital clock on the desk read 12:00am, Mike put down his book and focused on the screen, not sure what to expect. He half thought that the characters would spring to life at the stroke of midnight and start dancing and wondering around happily. That would have been less unsettling than what they were doing now: nothing. The waiting was torturous as Mike watched the stage closely. But as each minute passed, the feeling that it was all just a prank on the new guy grew more and more. Hell, the animatronics were probably bolted to the stage, anyway. 

The camera continued to pan slowly left and right, showing the dark figures on the stage, illuminated only slightly by the few fluorescent security lights that remained on at all times. Once or twice the image flickered with static for a few seconds, giving Mike a sense of dread at the idea of the cameras going offline altogether. After twenty minutes and still no movement, Mike opened his book again and continued to read, checking the screen less and less often as time dragged on. A couple of times he scrolled through the camera feeds just to check how much of the building he could see, but apart from the camera in the kitchen being faulty and only providing audio, they showed nothing of interest.

At 2:00am, Mike realised that he had forgotten one of Fritz’s rules. He hadn’t used the bathroom during his round and was now trying to decide whether or not he could hold it for another four hours. He checked the stage camera again and saw that the characters were all still there and none had moved. Mike looked closer at the screen. Maybe Bonnie on the left had turned a little, but it was hard to tell. Mike stood up from the desk, picked up the flashlight and opened the door on his right.

That same silence was deafening as he stepped slowly down the dark corridor, flashlight pointed towards the dining room ahead of him. Though he was alone, he again felt that he must remain quiet. Quiet enough to pass by unnoticed. He stood at the end of the corridor and pointed the flashlight to the bathroom door on his right. It wasn’t far. Just need to walk past the kitchen doors and he was there. Just as he reached the bathroom door, Mike heard a quiet, brief whirring sound from the stage. He shone his light towards it and his heart skipped a beat when he saw Chica the chicken looking directly at him. So, they are active, he thought. With renewed urgency, he quickly walked through the door and down the short hallway to the men’s bathroom. He locked himself into a cubicle and relieved himself, wanting nothing more than to just get back to his office. As he reached out to flush the toilet, a sound made him freeze on the spot. The bathroom door just outside the cubicle was pushed open slowly and the sound of slow, metal footsteps followed. Mike turned the flashlight off and stood still in the sudden dark, unable to move as the unmistakable presence of something very big waited just outside the cubicle door. A subtle, rancid smell filled the room and Mike tried his hardest not to cough, silently gagging until he slowly got used to it. 

The thing outside stood just as still as Mike did, only the sound of servos clicking and whirring occasionally as it turned its head side to side gave it away its presence. Mike had no idea how long he stood there. He only remembered the vivid images his imagination conjured up of the door behind him being suddenly ripped from the hinges with a crash and being forcefully dragged away to the backstage area, where all of the spare costume pieces were kept. The waiting for this seeming inevitability was the worst part. Even if he had a watch, he doubted he would have checked it for fear of making a sound. He had no idea if the thing outside the door was just following programming to find people to entertain, or if it had actual, malicious intent. Though if it _really_ wanted him, it would have surely gotten him by now. 

Finally, the thing clicked and whirred as it turned, and the sound of solid footsteps slowly left the bathroom. Mike waited a few more minutes before attempting to do the same. Very carefully, he unlocked the cubicle door and pulled it open. He dared not turn the flashlight back on, and slowly crept through the dark room towards the exit. When he reached the door to the dining room, Mike peeked carefully out and looked at the stage. His stomach dropped. Two of the animatronics were gone. One of them, Bonnie, stood perfectly still at the other end of the room near the backstage area, facing away from him. Chica was nowhere to be seen.

Mike crept slowly along the drawing-lined wall towards the left corridor past the kitchen. Bonnie hadn’t moved and Freddy remained on the stage, still staring straight ahead. Mike hoped that Chica wasn’t standing in the corridor blocking his path. As he reached the double-doors of the kitchen, Mike heard a sound that almost made him jump. From somewhere in the kitchen he could hear pots and pans being banged about as though someone was rummaging around in there. He snuck past the doors and moved as quickly and as quietly as he could down the dark corridor towards his office. Once he was in, he made sure the doors were closed properly and watched the cameras on the screen intently, scarcely taking his eyes off them for the rest of his shift.


	3. 4

**4**

At 6:00am the digital clock on the desk next to the monitor emitted a single beep. Mike watched the grainy image on the screen as the characters all turned from where they were standing in the dining room and walked stiffly back to the stage. Freddy was the only animatronic who hadn’t moved during the night. Perhaps his night mode was glitchy, Mike thought. Once the characters were all back on the stage in their usual spots, props again held in their hands and he was sure that he was safe, Mike stood and exited the office via the door on the right. A man was leaning against the red brick wall of the restaurant just outside the front door wearing a security uniform just like Mike’s, waiting to take the next shift. Mike opened the front door and the man greeted him.

“You’re new. First night? It must have been a rough one.” The man looked Mike up and down and then leaned past him to look at the stage. “They’re all back where they should be? I wait outside until the night guard comes out. Company policy. Don’t want to step inside too early, know what I mean?” 

Mike was too exhausted for small talk and just said goodbye as he left. The morning sun was bright in his eyes as he crossed the empty parking lot beneath the orange sky. It was the end of his shift, but for most of the businesses in the area, people were just setting up and getting ready for the day. The sky grew brighter as he waited at the bus stop on the corner, and the traffic was starting to increase. Mike knew, with tired frustration, that he would struggle to find sleep today. He was also well aware that he was due back here late tonight. After almost nodding off to sleep on the ride back home, Mike stumbled his way out of the bus and up towards his apartment. 

A pang of hunger hit his stomach with a ripple as he realised that he hadn’t eaten in the last several hours, and after a quick breakfast…or dinner… of a bowl of cereal, Mike collapsed into his bed and quickly blacked out. Only a few hours had passed before the sounds of a slamming door and angry footsteps from the neighbours down the hall woke him with a start. For a brief few seconds, Mike thought he was back in the office with _them_ just outside the doors, banging to get in. Once his heart had settled down, he was able to fall back into some form of sleep, only now he was constantly disturbed by recurring nightmares of metal beings at the door, brought on by the sounds outside of the loud neighbours.

The day crept slowly away like this until eventually, Mike just laid awake staring at the ceiling watching the shadows from the window creep across it as the daylight moved, lost in thought. He was hoping that this job would only be a brief one. Higher education hadn’t been for him, unfortunately, and now he had found himself having to start from the bottom rung of the employment ladder doing night shifts for who knows how long. At least he could make a start on his student debts. The night guard position is really more of an insurance thing, Fritz had said. Just a position to protect the company’s money if anything were to happen during the night. A high turnover position that is easily replaceable due to its minimal skill requirement. Mike rolled over and looked out the window at the overcast sky. It was getting darker. Well, maybe one day after a few months he will be able to move on to one of the day shifts. If he hangs around that long, anyway. There was no way he could go back to living with his parents. He had to prove to himself that he could get by on his own, that he could live his own life without their help. He could already picture their ‘I told you so’ expressions on their faces. He turned to look at the alarm clock beside the bed. It was nearly 6:30pm. This was probably the most rest he was going to get today, anyway. 

With a groan, Mike climbed out of his bed and went to get ready for his next shift. After a quick shower, he had a momentary pause when he was using the toilet. He took out a half-full bottle of cola from his fridge and emptied it, then rinsed it out. He wouldn’t be making any more after-hours trips to the restrooms after last night. He then ate a quick meal and stuffed his bag with some microwave dinners and his book. He put on his guard uniform and threw his jacket on over it, getting ready for the cool night air. After pouring coffee into a thermos and putting it into his bag, he begrudgingly left his apartment into the darkening evening.

After detouring into town to buy himself a cheap watch, Mike made the slow walk towards the restaurant. It was Tuesday night. His second shift. Surely, it couldn’t be any worse than the previous one. At the least, he won’t be caught outside of the office again. He turned into the carpark and looked up at the dark, looming building. His nerves slowly started to build as he headed towards the front entrance at the left side of the front wall where the replacement guard had been waiting for him that morning. He stood at the entrance and took a breath before entering the building. 

“Hey, there he is!” Fritz was leaning against one of the long dining tables, arms folded, talking to Jen the cleaning lady. He smiled at Mike. “How did you go last night? Pretty well, I’d say. Seeing as you’ve come back.”

Mike’s nerves settled as he saw him there looking so relaxed and in control. “Well, to be honest, I thought it was some kind of prank. Nothing happened for ages, then I went outside to use the restroom—” 

“You did what?!” Fritz stood up straight and stared at Mike, eyes locked on his. “I told you not to leave the office after midnight.” 

“Don’t worry, I definitely won’t be doing that again. One of them cornered me in there for ages.” Mike waved a hand towards the restroom door.

“Well, that would have been Chica.” Fritz said, looking towards the chicken animatronic on the stage. “She tends to wander down that side of the building. Makes a mess of the kitchen sometimes, isn’t that right, Jen?” Jen made a grunt as she made her way to the restroom with her mop and bucket. “Bonnie tends to wander around the other side of the building.” Fritz walked slowly towards the stage, watching them as he spoke. “Interestingly enough, Freddy himself doesn’t come off the stage very often. He becomes a lot more active in the dark, though, so there’s another reason to not short out the power.” Fritz thought for a moment, “Although, when he does move around it can be pretty hard to spot him on the cameras. He tends to stay in the shadows more than the others. Almost like he’s trying to sneak up on you.” Fritz checked his watch then turned towards Mike. “Well, I’d better leave you to it. Good luck, okay? And don’t leave the office after midnight again. Oh, and one more thing. If you do get caught like that, just flash your light at them a few times. They can get disoriented with bright lights. It causes a system restart, or something. They should wonder off back towards the stage if that happens. Well, good luck.” Fritz then turned and left the building, once again suddenly leaving Mike on his own. Mike turned and walked towards the office down the end of the corridor. 

After putting his meals in the fridge and placing the empty bottle down underneath the desk, Mike opened the locker and took out the empty Freddy head. He sat down at the desk and watched the monitor, switching through the camera feeds, watching as the grey images panned slowly side to side. Everyone was in the proper place. He then set his watch to the clock on the desk and waited for the long night to start. It was now night two.


	4. 5

**5**

Mike watched the screen and saw Jen leave through the front door of the building. The bang as it slammed shut echoed down to his office like a sudden shout. He was on his own and it was time to do his round for the night.

He stood and stretched, trying to ignore the dull wave of exhaustion that was trying to take him over, and walked out the door on his left. Opposite this door was the manager’s office. This door also had the frosted wire mesh window, and Mike wondered idly as he shook the handle if there was also an electronic security lock on the other side. He didn’t remember seeing one during his interview, and he doubted the manager was ever here this late crunching the numbers, anyway.

Mike turned right and walked down the corridor towards the main dining room. He passed between the storage closet and the fuse box when his flashlight landed on the purple curtains of Pirate Cove, the circular stage protruding onto the main floor. He paused and looked at it curiously. 

“Alright,” Mike said to himself quietly, “Who’s behind here, anyway?”

He reached out with his left hand and slowly pulled the curtain aside, revealing only pitch-black darkness behind it. An inexplicable pang of fear hit him as he stared into the black. Like there was some kind of sentience deep within the darkness, staring back at him. That same smell wafted out to him that he had smelled last night from Chica. Mike raised his flashlight and shone it properly into the stage and almost fell back at what stood there. 

Standing at the back of the stage was a lone animatronic, arms slumped, with its head down and slightly to the side. It almost looked sad and contemplative. At first glance it looked like a skeleton, its lean form covered in torn and frayed red matte fur, but Mike quickly saw that it was a fox. The fur was completely missing from the knees down, revealing the metal endoskeleton underneath. Its chest had a large tear through it, revealing the metal behind it and its jaw looked to be unhinged and opened unnaturally wide, forming an unsettling slack-jawed appearance. A black patch covered its left eye and its left hand was a pirate’s hook, which glinted in the beam of the flashlight. As Mike moved the light up and down it, he thought he could hear a faint clicking sound emit from it which then went silent.

“What large teeth you have, Foxy…” Mike muttered to himself, before lowering the curtain again and pulling himself away. Reassured by the OUT OF ORDER sign, he carried on with the rest of his rounds. Once he was content that the place was locked and secure, Mike sat himself down in the office chair again and watched the monitor. The empty Freddy head sat on the table, looking back at him with an eerie cheeriness. Hopefully, Mike thought, he wouldn’t need to put that thing on any time soon.

It was becoming warm in the security office. The air in there was stuffy and there was no real ventilation, other than the metal desk fan next to the monitor. Mike leaned forward and turned it on and sighed as the cool breeze swept across his face. He sat back and stared at the screen, knowing that none of the greyscale figures would be moving for a while yet. It was 11:12pm. Mike opened up his book and began to read, listening to the dull hum of the fan and the occasional shudder of the fridge behind him. He was starting to like this part. It was peaceful, but it was also the calm before the storm. After being dealt a few bad hands recently, he was eager to hold on to the good parts. This wasn’t exactly a hard job. He just needed to keep an eye on the animatronics.

The cool breeze of the fan was nice on his face and his eyes were beginning to skim over the same sentence over and over without him actually reading it. The wave of exhaustion hit him again and before he knew it, he was nodding off into a light sleep.

***

The book landed with a loud thud on the floor, stirring Mike awake. He opened his eyes and looked up, startling backwards off his seat as he saw the empty Freddy head staring back at him from the desk. Composing himself, he stood and looked at the clock next to the monitor: 12:40am. His stomach lurched as he scrambled to check the cameras, adrenaline pumping through him. Bonnie was standing at the end of the corridor on Mike’s left, staring down it with that cartoony grin on his face. Freddy and Chica were still on the stage. Mike switched the camera back onto the left corridor, keeping Bonnie on the screen as he watched. After a few minutes with no movement and his nerves calming down, Mike turned away to make himself a microwave dinner. Keeping his eyes on the screen, he put the dinner into the microwave and turned it on. It hummed loudly as it cooked behind him, seeming too loud in the small security office. Bonnie still stood at the far end of the corridor, unmoving, so Mike decided to check on the others on the stage again. He swallowed as his nerves once again lurched. Chica was now missing. 

Mike switched through the screens trying to find her, thinking that she would be in the kitchen again, especially as that camera had no video feed. He then found her alarmingly close to him on the camera just outside his office door on the right. She was staring directly at the camera, seeming to know what it was. Seeming to _know_ that he was watching her. Quickly, Mike pushed the right-hand button on the desk, slamming the door locks shut with a reassuring thud. The microwave beeped, and Mike realised that the humming had masked her footsteps as she got nearer to him. Feeling secure on the right-hand side, Mike then checked on Bonnie again, hoping he wasn’t too close. There he was still, standing at the end of the corridor, staring down it. Mike peered closer at the screen. He stood there like a looming shadow just by the storage closet, his rabbit ears and toothy grin doing nothing to mask his threatening presence in the dark. Mike looked over to his right again at the frosted window where Chica was near. He could now see her yellow form, blurred through the glass, feeling her eyes on him. He waited for her to push on the door, but she just stood there perfectly still, staring at him. She won’t try the door, Mike thought, she knows it’s locked. She _knows_ it’s locked.

Mike’s attention was constantly divided between the door window to his right and the screen in front of him. The bear head on the desk served as a constant reminder that it was his last defence against them. That if he shorted out the fuse, he would have no power and the doors would unlock. He would be alone in the dark, wearing that stupid thing, trying to breathe in this stuffy office while waiting them out. Mike couldn’t think of a more undignified way to be caught out. 

He glanced at the door again. Chica was gone. He flicked through the screens and saw that she was back in the main dining room lurking near the kitchen door. Good, Mike thought as he unlocked the door. Stay there. Bonnie was also back in the main dining and seemed to have a renewed interest in the backstage area where all the spare costume parts were. Mike began to calm down and remembered his recently microwaved dinner sitting behind him. With a fresh gurgle of hunger, he peeled back the plastic covering and quickly ate the poorly heated meal, never taking his eyes off of the screens. 

The rest of his shift played out in much that way. The animatronics scarcely made their way back towards the office again, although Chica did stand halfway down the corridor for longer than Mike would have liked. He was beginning to get comfortable with this job. Maybe he was imagining it, but Mike was starting to see personality traits in the characters. It was as if they were more than dressed up robots performing scripted commands and functions. Mike was beginning to feel as though he was getting to know them on some level. It was nearly 4:30am when Mike was idly flicking through the different cameras, coffee thermos in hand and almost bored with the inactivity of the last few hours, when he saw something strange. Something that snuffed that feeling of familiarity he was starting to develop towards the characters. Checking briefly on Pirate Cove, Mike saw something that made him do a double take.

The curtain was opened slightly. It was perfectly still, but it was now being held open in much the same way as when Mike held it open at the start of his shift. Mike looked closer at the grainy image on the screen. Behind the curtain was just sheer darkness, but there was a small reflection there, shining up at him. With a pang of horror, Mike realised that it was a single eye looking up into the camera. Knowing what it was, he could now make out a set of teeth hanging unnaturally low below it. _What large teeth you have._ Foxy was awake. That same feeling of malice was coming from that face on the screen that Mike had felt from the others. After a few moments, the screen flickered with static and when the picture came back, the curtain was back the way it was and the face in the dark was gone, back behind it. Mike couldn’t help but be reminded of the saying: _When you stare into the void, the void stares back._

He checked the hallway camera on his left and saw that it was empty. He tested the door locks on his left and kept the empty Freddy head close by, ready to throw it on as soon as he needed to. Although for some reason, Mike doubted that Foxy would be fooled by that trick.


	5. 6

**6**

As soon as Mike got back home, he fell asleep in his bed in an instant. The sheer exhaustion of the last two days and nights were taking their toll on him and he was not yet used to the routine. Though he fell quickly into a deep sleep, it wasn’t long before strange dreams and images entered his mind. The various sounds from the neighbours around him and from the street outside made their way into his dreams, and only made the scenes more real. 

_It was night-time. He was alone in a bedroom that wasn’t quite his and he was standing by the door with his ear pressed against it. In the darkness, he felt a flashlight in his hand, his other hand holding onto the doorknob. He had to check that there was nothing on the other side of the door. Slowly, he opened it and raised the flashlight. Once he worked up his courage, he switched it on just long enough to see a large dark figure at the end of a hallway, eyes glinting back in the darkness. It had been leaning in from around a corner and had quickly moved out of sight when the light hit it. Mike closed the door and ran to a door just like it on the opposite side of the room that led down a different hallway and pressed his ear against it. Movement. Holding his breath, he could hear… No, not so much hear, but feel something approach the door. Everything was deathly still as Mike waited for a sudden attack that he was sure was about to happen. Gently, he opened the door just slightly and listened. He could hear a faint breathing sound, but it was hard to tell what it was. He flicked the light on—_

Mike jerked awake drenched in sweat. A car had driven past his apartment and blared its horn, startling him awake. Looking around, realising that he was in his own bedroom (with only one door), Mike stood and looked out of his window at the large rocky hills that enclosed the town. It was a bright but overcast day and the sky was a glaring white against the pale red, rocky hills. This setting couldn’t have been any more opposite to his workplace. He checked the alarm clock next to the bed. It was nearly 2:00pm. Screw it, Mike thought. This afternoon is mine. After getting a can of beer from the fridge and making a mental note of groceries he needed to buy, Mike took his can to the bathroom and turned on the shower. He was determined to relax this afternoon and enjoy the little pleasures in life, and not let the isolation and irrational fears from his job affect the rest of his time. He especially didn’t need them seeping into his dreams. With the shower warmed, he stepped in with his can and stood there for a moment sipping the cold liquid, which was refreshing against the warm, steamy shower. He got himself clean and ready for his afternoon into town. It was now 2:15pm. Time for breakfast.

Mike wandered through the town of Hurricane, a place he’d only lived in for a few weeks, and found himself at a small diner. Once he had sat down at a table and had ordered his food, Mike waited and stared out the window at the cloudy afternoon. Even though the sun was still high in the sky, Mike felt as though it was setting too early. He thought idly of one day soon looking like a sickly vampire who never saw sunlight, and what that might do to his health. His thoughts wandered and he felt the throbbing tiredness trying to sweep over him, hoping that his beloved coffee, his tether to the world of the living for the next few days, was only moments away. Staring out through the window at the busy street beyond, looking at all the life going by, his thoughts were interrupted by some women at the table next to him talking, when he heard them mention some familiar names. 

“Yeah, my son loves Freddy. He’s his favourite. We’re taking the kids out there tonight as a surprise.”

“Oh yeah? We haven’t been out there for a while. Is the pizza over there still as good as I remember? My daughter loves that fox-pirate one. But you have to book like a private show to see him.”

“The last time we were there, that show was out-of-order. Has been for months.”

“Oh? That’s a shame. I wonder what’s taking so long to get it fixed.”

“Well, I hear that place isn’t doing too well. Rumour is that it might close soon. I don’t mind too much. The pizza there is great and it’s a good bargaining tool with the kids, but those things always creeped me out. Always felt a bit… I don’t know. Wrong.”

The waitress appeared with Mike’s coffee, which pulled his attention away from the customers at the next table. As she turned away the two women stood to leave. Even when Mike was trying to take his mind off of that place, he couldn’t help but be reminded of it. The place they were talking about was not the one that he knew. The difference was… well, night and day.

After his meal, Mike went to do some grocery shopping, mainly to prepare for his next few shifts. Microwave meals would have to be replaced with ready-to-eat refrigerated meals, such as yoghurts and sandwiches, now that he knew that the microwave could mask certain sounds that he needed to listen out for. It seemed that Mike was quickly learning some new tricks for his shifts. The few remaining hours of the afternoon were quickly vanishing, and Mike felt the dread in his stomach return as the sun slowly set behind the darkening hills, signalling that his next shift was approaching. After returning to his apartment to collect his things, Mike got changed into his work uniform and took his usual bus to Freddy’s. 

The night air was again cool as he walked across the empty parking lot towards the dark, red brick building, but it was still warmer inside. The faint smell of pizza lingered in the air just behind the harsh chemicals from Jen’s progress through the building. 

“Hey, hey! Night three!” Fritz was smiling at him. “Did you have any trouble last night? I didn’t think you would. Hey, so things start getting real tonight. Freddy and his friends tend to become more active as the week progresses. It’s like a leftover programming from when they used to walk around amongst the customers. Each day would progressively get busier towards the weekend, then Monday would be our quietest day.” Mike was not necessarily reassured by this, but at least he wasn’t working the weekends. Fritz looked at his watch and began to leave. “Well, I’d better leave you to it. It looks like you’re getting the hang of things.” 

They said their goodbyes and Mike turned and walked down the corridor to the security office, giving Jen a curt nod as she exited the kitchen, which she ignored. The air seemed to get warmer and thicker down this end of the building, and the little desk fan that was already spinning didn’t seem to make much of a difference to it. Mike set his sandwiches and tubs of yoghurt in the mini fridge and took out one of his remaining microwave meals. Better to eat it now than later on when his shift really starts. After Jen had left the building and after he had eaten, Mike stood up and picked up the flashlight that was on the desk. Time to do his one round for the night. Fritz had told him to do two, but Mike really didn’t see much point in doing that. He also wanted to minimise how much time he spent walking past the main stage area. He knew that the characters were supposed to be inactive and restrained by their programming, but he couldn’t help but feel that there was more to them. There was a kind of sentience within them. They weren’t just old animatronic robots. They were beginning to feel almost like real people. Almost. 

His round of the building had the usual result. Nothing to report, nobody to shoo away. All of the doors were locked fast. Only the security lights remained on, giving the building that greyscale appearance. Mike made his way silently back towards the office and waited for the dreaded midnight hour. 


	6. 7

**7**

Fritz wasn’t lying. Not long after midnight, Bonnie had left the stage and was already loitering around in the arcade room opposite it. Flicking quickly through the cameras and wishing that he could view more than one feed at once, Mike saw that Chica was now standing between two of the long tables of the main dining room just below the stage. Freddy still stood in his place, microphone in hand ready to sing, and that was just the way Mike liked it. Stay there, Freddy, Mike thought as he watched the screen. Give me one more night. 

Mike switched from the stage feed back to the main dining room feed. Chica was still between the tables, but now closer to the camera, staring intently into it. Both of the animatronics were on the move as they usually were, but they seemed to have different intentions. Bonnie seemed to be following his script, going from room to room looking for children to entertain. But Chica seemed fixed on finding Mike. She had seen him already. _Really_ seen him. And she knew that he was down there at the other end of the corridor, behind those flimsy wooden doors with their temporary locks.

Bonnie was still in the arcade, but further back, now just a shadow in the dark and would have been unseen by Mike if he didn’t know he was already there. Sitting stiffly at his desk with his coffee thermos in hand, Mike switched the camera feed to Pirate Cove. Seeing Bonnie hidden in the dark like that reminded him to check on Foxy, and thankfully the curtains were still drawn closed. Slowly, the initial rush of the night settled down as the animatronics remained at the main dining room at the other end of the building, but Mike knew not to take his eyes off them for too long. They could be quick. 

Time was passing and the stuffy air was not letting up, the only relief coming from the small desk fan that had already been on when he walked in. Mike found himself breathing as silently as he could, listening out for them as they moved about. He very rarely saw them move on the cameras, they only moved offscreen as if they could tell when he was watching them, but he could hear them through the various ambient sounds of the restaurant if he listened. Trusting this, Mike turned to retrieve a sandwich from the mini fridge, then paused. He looked towards the door on the right and listened, waiting. He thought he heard a noise, but when nothing else followed, he took the sandwich and closed the fridge. 

Mike kept watch of the right-hand corridor on the screen as he opened the pre-packaged sandwich, the plastic crinkling as he did. The corridor was empty. Chica was standing just outside the kitchen door, staring at it. Mike then glanced at the door on his left and flinched. Bonnie was standing there, staring at him through the frosted glass, eyes fixed on him. Scrambling, Mike pressed the left-hand button on the desk and the door locks slammed into place with a loud thud that reverberated through the building. Mike sat perfectly still, wondering if he should be wearing the spare Freddy head to deter him. Then Mike heard it. Quick footsteps on his right as Chica approached the office. Bonnie still stood just outside the door, staring at him as if only seeing him for the first time and Chica was now just outside on the right. In a panic, Mike pressed the right-hand button and immediately realised his mistake. 

The office went dark as the door locks on his left thudded open. Only a dull red emergency light above him on the ceiling remained on. The monitor went black and the fan turned off, the stuffy warm air returning. Everything was silent. Mike picked up the Freddy head, almost dropped it, and put it on his head like a helmet before slumping back in his seat, causing himself to roll back in it towards the mini fridge and the locker. 

Mike held still, trying to look like an empty costume that was just part of the environment. All he could see was a partial view of the desk in front of him bathed in that dull red light. Trying to control his breathing, he listened as the doors on both sides slowly creaked open. And the smell. That old, wafting smell that must have been from years of grime building up in the joints. The smell of perhaps old food or sauces being spilled on them by small children back when they could walk amongst the patrons. Before the Bite. It was quiet, but he could feel them there. One on either side of him. They didn’t quite have the presence of people walking into the room, but there was still something almost human about them. These were robots that seemed to _think_. 

The mask was stuffy and hot. Hard to breathe. Breathing too loudly. Too quickly. Be quiet. Be still. Mike slowed his breathing to the point that he could only hear his rapid heartbeat in his ears. Maybe it was the blood pulsing through them while they were pressed against the inside of the mask. A bang to his right. Don’t flinch. Don’t move. The red light began to flicker. Did nothing in this building work properly? Darkness for a few seconds, then the red light returned, and Mike stifled a gasp. Bonnie’s face was inches from his own, staring deep into those dark eye sockets of the Freddy head, searching for anything untoward. The light flickered rapidly for a few seconds, then it all went black again. Silence. Silence that didn’t mean anything. They could all be there, for all he knew. Still Mike sat, body tensed, caught in that extreme anxiety of waiting for a sudden attack with the energy of a tightly wound spring that finally broke free. The red light returned, and the office appeared empty.

Slowly, Mike turned his head left and right, half expecting to see both Chica and Bonnie at his sides, staring at him. Tricking him into moving too much, looking at him with ‘gotcha’ expressions on their immobile, cheery faces. Both doors were wide open with only looming darkness beyond them. The office was indeed empty. 

Mike looked at the desk again. _The flashlight._ Listening carefully, and almost certain that there was nothing outside the doorways watching him, Mike reached out and picked it up from the desk. _Just flash it at them a few times. It causes a system restart, or something._ Not daring to remove the Freddy head, Mike stood and carefully closed the door on his right, then faced the one to his left. One thing left to do. He had to go out there and switch the fuse box back on. Not that he had been shown how. 

***

Still wearing the stifling Freddy head, flashlight in hand pointing low at the ground in front of him, Mike crept out of the office into the darkness of the left corridor. If any of the mascots appeared, his plan was to hold still and pretend to be one of them. If he lost his nerve doing that, he would flick the light at them rapidly and hope that they would reset and return to the stage. The place was silent, and it was hard to take each step quietly. A few paces down into the long corridor, Mike paused and held his breath. He thought he could hear a faint sound coming from far ahead in the main dining room. It sounded like a music box. It was too quiet to hear properly, and almost as soon as Mike noticed it, it stopped. He raised the flashlight briefly, trying to not draw attention to himself. The corridor was empty, and he was almost halfway to the fuse box just before Pirate Cove. 

The flashlight began to flicker so Mike switched it off to conserve whatever battery was left and continued on blindly in the dark. The Freddy head he was wearing was becoming heavy and the musty, thick air in it was almost making him gag. After a dozen or so slow, careful paces, Mike stopped and switched the flashlight on for a second, then off again, mainly to make sure that he wasn’t about to walk into any animatronics that might have appeared before him. The passage was still empty, and he could now see the protruding purple curtain at the edge of the next room ahead of him. He was getting nearer to the fuse box. Mike progressed this way a few more times, walking slowly in the dark, stopping and flashing the light briefly, then continuing on walking. He had almost reached the fuse box when he noticed the supply closet door opposite it.

The door was ajar, but was one of them still in there or was it left opened from earlier? Mike stood still in the dark, held his breath and listened. There was only silence, but these things could be just as silent. Eventually, he crept up to the door, raised the flashlight, and flicked it on. There was nothing there other than Jen’s trolley and various items stacked on the shelves. Mike turned and continued with the task at hand. The fuse box was right in front of him. He opened it and shined the light over the fuses, looking for the faulty one. Spare fuses lay just below the panel on the inside of the frame, along with some spare wire and a small screwdriver. The light dimmed and flickered in his hand, but pretty quickly Mike found the switch he was looking for as it was circled with black marker and with the words ‘THIS ONE’ written above it. Clearly, whoever Mike had replaced had done this a few times. Above it in faded letters was the word ‘MAIN’.

Mike pulled out the fuse and compared it with the spare ones on the ledge, then felt another pang of dread come over him. All of them were blown. Becoming increasingly desperate, Mike took off the Freddy head, breathed in the slightly fresher air, and put the flashlight in his mouth. It was pitch black anyway, he reasoned. Would it matter if he wore the head or not? Using the screwdriver, Mike undid the screws on one of the fuses and pulled out the old wire. He was unwinding a length of the new wire when he heard a noise to his left. He spun around and a cold chill ran through him. 

Foxy stood just outside the curtain of Pirate Cove like a skeleton in a dark cave. He was looking directly at Mike, bent slightly as if ready to pounce, his uncovered eye shining back at him. His jaw hung unnaturally low and appeared to be broken. All of the animatronic mascots were creepy, but a publicly defective one was something else. The flashlight began to flicker, and as it did, Foxy started to twitch. Remembering Fritz’s advice, Mike took it out of his mouth and flicked the light on and off repeatedly, aghast at the intermittent sight of Foxy twitching in the dark, as if in pain. The light went out and Mike couldn’t turn it back on. A scuffling noise started in front of him, and Mike desperately whacked the light in his hand. When it came back on, Foxy was gone and the curtain was swaying slightly. 

Not sure if he was safe or not, Mike continued fixing the fuse while listening out for any sounds around him. Once the new wire was screwed in and the fixed fuse was in place, Mike put the Freddy head back on and went to flick the main switch back on. There it was again. That quiet melody coming from somewhere in the building. The music box. Mike strained to hear it properly and to work out where it was coming from, but before he could, the music went silent again. Not wanting to be outside of the office any longer, Mike flicked the switch and blinked as the security lights came back on and the ambient sounds of a working restaurant filled the air again. 

Mike looked towards the main dining area and saw that the stage was empty. He wasn’t sure where any of the animatronics were, but as he peered out into the room, he spotted a dark shape at the other end near the front door, its shiny eyes glinting back at him. Quickly, Mike stepped away and went back to the security office. He closed both doors, making sure they were firmly in place, and took off the Freddy head. He breathed deeply in the stream of the spinning desk fan and took in his surroundings. His sandwich sat on the desk next to the clock which was now flashing 12:00 and needed to be reset. Mike sat down and matched it up with his watch, then resumed watching the cameras, keeping a close eye on the animatronics as they moved about the restaurant. Freddy was hard to spot. The only thing that gave away his location on the cameras was his glinting eyes looking back at him from the dark corners of each room that he was in.

Finally, the clock beeped as 6:00am ticked by.


	7. 8

**8**

For the first time that week, Mike slept soundly through the day. The toll of the unusual hours had become too much for his body, which had been protesting the change in sleep cycle since he started working nights. He was asleep as soon as he got home at 7:00am, and it was 6:30pm when he woke. Mike lamented the impending loss of daylight in his future, but for the first time felt well rested. He was too exhausted to even have any nightmares. As much as he didn’t like his job, he was starting to get used to it. Each shift taught him something new, and none of his mistakes had cost him yet. He stood up from his bed, put on his night guard clothes and jacket, and got ready for his fourth shift.

Mike entered the restaurant, spoke briefly with Fritz, acknowledged Jen’s presence much the same way she acknowledged his, and went to the fuse box. He grabbed the blown fuses along with the spare wire and screwdriver. There was no way he was going to get caught out like that again. He took them with him back to the office and got to work repairing each one, humming to himself and listening out for the slam of the front door that would follow Jen’s egress. Once the task was done, Mike put the repaired fuses back in the frame of the fuse box and grabbed a few spare batteries (the old ones from the locker had since been used up) from the supply closet behind him before continuing with his round. 

The flashlight cast long, shifting shadows behind the animatronics as they stood in their proper positions on the stage, posed as the beloved children’s characters that they were during the day. As Mike shined the light into the arcade opposite, so did the shadows move like black spider webs behind the pinball machines. This place really did seem to change at night, and Mike wasn’t convinced that it was just his imagination. Once he was sure that the restaurant was locked up as tight as it always was, Mike retreated back to the perceived safety of the familiar security office. Sitting at the desk, flicking idly through the various camera feeds, Mike mulled over what he had learned about his job in the last few days. 

As far as he had been told, there was a glitch in the animatronics’ programming that made them see him as one of them once it was after hours. But they saw him as an endoskeleton stripped of its costume coverings. It appears to be strictly against the rules here, so much so that the characters themselves will try to quickly remedy the problem if they discover one of themselves uncovered. Perhaps it is to stop any children from seeing them as the metal endoskeletons that they actually were and becoming frightened of them. After all, the children were the most important thing to the restaurant, and their happiness was crucial to the franchise. Mike leaned back in his seat and looked at the Freddy head on the desk. They saw him as an endoskeleton that needed to be quickly stuffed into a suit, but wearing the head seemed to be enough to trick them. Thankfully, that was enough. Mike couldn’t picture himself wearing a full suit to avoid their scrutiny. But how would they see him during the day? Would they recognise his face? If he were to come in during the day and walk right by them, would they stop and stare at him or carry on with their scripted actions? 

Mike looked around the room. The doors on either side of him were reinforced with heavy duty metal locks that slid into place instantly when the button was pushed. Push both of them, however, and he would be completely exposed and in danger. Not that Fritz would say he was in any danger. Either way, Mike definitely didn’t want to have to go out into the corridor again. He held the Freddy head in his lap as he thought, waiting for his shift to start properly. They move around at night to avoid seizing up because they can no longer move around during the day. Because of the Bite. It wouldn’t have been enough to decommission the one that did it, whichever one it was. The public would have needed to know that the company had taken proper action. The characters being restricted to the stage would have been that kind of action. That, and remove the animatronic responsible.

Mike slowly swivelled around in his seat, Freddy head still in his lap. He may have to wear this thing pretty much constantly during the busier nights. He could probably spend most of his shift just sitting there with it on, letting them wander through his office undisturbed. Mike shook his head. No. He could hardly breathe in that thing as it was. Trying that all night would be impossible. Besides, they seemed smarter than that. They felt smarter than that. He looked up at the monitor and switched to the feed showing the closed purple curtains of Pirate Cove. He wasn’t sure why, but he felt like he really shouldn’t underestimate Foxy. Mike flicked the feed back to the main stage. Bonnie was off the stage, and Freddy appeared to be looking right at the camera. Mike’s shift had now started. 

The image flickered and went to static. When the image came back, Freddy was looking ahead to the dining room again. Bonnie was now among the long tables, looking down at the empty chairs. A few minutes later, Chica had left the stage and had made her way towards the kitchen. Mike changed the feed to the kitchen and listed to the audio. She was in there, banging the place about, probably looking for pizzas to bring out to the children who weren’t there. Mike smiled to himself. Poor Jen. Chica was undoing all of her hard work. Mike flicked back to Bonnie, who had immediately moved into the arcade. There he stood, a dark figure made taller by the large rabbit ears on his head, at the back of the arcade nestled between the pinball machines. 

A low, deep laugh echoed through the building and Mike felt a pang of terror. In a different context, it could have been the belly laugh of a big, fluffy teddy bear. But here and now, that laugh was sinister and almost demonic. Static took over the monitor as Mike tried to get the feed of the main stage back up, and when it eventually did, the stage was empty. Mike flicked through the feeds trying to find where Freddy went, fear of the unknown rising in him. He was on none of the camera feeds. Unless… The audio from the kitchen camera still sounded of Chica moving things around, but there was something else behind it. The music box. They were both in there. Good. Good, stay in there at that end of the building.

Mike flicked through the images more, unsure of when he will be able to relax next. Bonnie was now standing at the end of the left corridor, just a dark figure staring back down it, cheery smile only partially visible. But something was wrong. Mike wasn’t sure if it was a problem with the camera or with Bonnie. As he watched, Bonnie’s head seemed to spasm and twitch rapidly every few seconds. This seemed to Mike to be a horrifying new development. Was he glitching? That laugh. There was that deep laugh again. Mike searched for Freddy desperately. It took a moment, but Mike eventually found him in a back corner of the main dining room, just outside the backstage door. He had hidden himself well, the only real indicator that he was there being his glinting eyes looking up into the camera. 

Mike checked the camera to the corridor on his right. There was nothing much to see there except… the image flickered and cleared again. It wasn’t there now, but Mike was sure he saw something on the wall. It was a promotional poster that he didn’t remember seeing before. The character on it looked like Freddy, but the colours were wrong. They were too pale. Mike rubbed his eyes. There was nothing on the wall apart from the children’s crayon drawings. Perhaps there was another one on the other corridor. Mike switched to the other one and gasped. Foxy was out of his stage and was sprinting towards Mike’s office at full pace, a silently screaming skeleton tearing towards him from the dark. Mike had no idea that they could move so fast, let alone actively run. Heart pounding in his chest, Mike pressed the button to the left door and heard it slam locked. Barely a second after, he heard the banging against the door. Each bang caused the wood to creak and the door to shake in its frame. If the heavy locks weren’t there to brace the door shut, Foxy would have burst through in no time. 

The banging stopped quickly and when Mike checked the camera just outside his door, Foxy was nowhere to be seen. When he calmed down, Mike had a moment to think. That was unusual, Mike thought. Foxy hadn’t even seen him that night yet seemed determined to get to him. And there was real aggression behind that attack on the door. Less and less did Mike believe that it was a simple programming glitch that made them want to get to him. It seemed more likely that they remembered him and knew that he was there. Something about him was drawing their attention, but they were still somewhat bound by their programming.

Mike heard the laugh again and it snapped him back to the task at hand. Where were they all? Bonnie was back at the tables, staring into the cameras and Chica was in the bathroom. Freddy could have been anywhere, because it always took a moment to spot him. 

The rest of Mike’s shift went on much this way and felt to him like his longest shift yet. A few times he had to flick the flashlight on and off at an animatronic outside his office window to get them to leave, and he was glad that he had replaced the batteries. He never forgot to check Foxy regularly and fortunately didn’t see him again that night. Freddy however was always moving and was always hard to spot. When Mike’s shift ended and the animatronics went back to the stage, Mike felt a pang of hunger hit him in the stomach as he finally relaxed. He had been tensed for most of the night without even realising it. The sound of that alarm beeping at 6:00am was becoming his most favourite thing. He could almost cheer.


	8. 9

**9**

_Sitting in the dark at the edge of a bed in a bedroom that wasn’t his own, flashlight held in trembling hands. A door stood on each side of the room; a layout reminiscent of the place where he worked. A silent night. Not even a groan of wind from outside. Listening intently for anything. He should be alone, but he knew that he wasn’t. They followed him here. Move. Check the doors. The right one first. Run. Quietly. He pressed his ear against the door and listened. It was too quiet to tell. Needed to peek. Needed to check. Use the flashlight. They don’t like the flashlight. Open the door a bit and listen. Silent. Flick on the flashlight for a moment. Empty hallway. Good, now close it and check the other door. Quickly! No sound from this one, either. They were here, though. One could be right there now, in the pitch-black darkness. He flicked the light on and gasped. A pair of glinting eyes at the other end of the hallway, looking back at him before moving away out of view. Close the door and return to the centre of the room, at the end of the bed. Listen for any movement._

_The closet in front of you. Was it ajar before? Are you sure it wasn’t closed all the way? A shuffling sound from behind it. Needed to peek. Needed to check. He approached the closet silently and held the handle tight. Summoning up his remaining bravery, he yanked the closet door open and flashed the light into it. A piercing scream filled his head and the razor-toothed image bore itself into his mind into his waking moment._

Mike startled awake as his alarm blared seemingly into his brain. He reached out and fumbled for it before switching it off. It was 8:00pm. Darkness outside. He had again missed the sunlight, but he planned to make up for that over the weekend. Groggily, Mike rose and began to get ready for his Friday night shift. He had been both dreading and looking forward to it. He expected it to be the most active night of his week, but after it was done, he had his weekend break and he could ease back into work with the first few shifts being comparatively easier. Mostly, he just wanted it to be over. Begrudgingly, he got ready and left his apartment and then headed towards the bus stop and waited. 

Fritz wasn’t waiting for him when Mike entered the restaurant. Only Jen’s cleaning trolley laden with chemicals was there to greet him near the front door just by the restrooms. Mike wasn’t sure if Fritz’s absence was an indicator of his confidence in Mike’s ability to do his job well, or if Fritz wanted to be nowhere near this place tonight. Or, maybe he just wanted to go out and enjoy his Friday night. That’s exactly what Mike would rather be doing. Regardless, Mike was missing the brief human interaction with his co-worker and trainer and the slight reassurance in his abilities that it usually brought. As Mike began to make his way down the corridor to his office, Jen appeared out of the restroom door and quickly pushed her trolley back towards the supply closet. She seemed flustered, with no intention of hanging around later than she needed to. Without a word, she walked back past Mike and exited the building. Mike looked out through the front door to the fragment of the outside world beyond it and then turned to the characters on the stage. They were staring ahead, but Mike could feel them watching him. He turned and continued on down towards the office. He had no interest in doing any rounds tonight.

***

The fifth night was by far the busiest Mike had worked. As soon as the clock hit midnight, the characters seemed to spring to life as if they were eagerly awaiting their programming to allow them to move. Throughout his shift, Mike didn’t dare look away from the screen and after a while, he had a bit of a routine worked out. He had kept the door on his left locked tight so he didn’t have to worry about Foxy (unless he sprinted across the restaurant to approach from the other side, but Mike figured that he would see that pretty quickly), and mostly focused on the screen and the door on his right. If any of them got too close or hung around for too long, he would put on the Freddy head. If the head didn’t work, he would use the flashlight. If that didn’t work, well… he just hoped that it would work. 

Throughout the night Mike sat in silence, anxiously counting down the minutes and hoping that the cameras didn’t cut out. Searching through the different feeds, he thought he heard a strange noise coming from the backstage room, the one with all of the spare suit parts. He had been flicking quickly through the cameras at regular intervals, and when he saw that this room was empty, he went to change to another feed. But then there was a sound that caught his attention. It sounded like crying. Mike stared at the feed, studying the room carefully, listening to the slightly grainy audio coming from the room. There was nothing to see, no person in the room, no-one hiding in the corner. But there it was. It was not a constant weeping, but there were moments of audible grief, like a child trying to cry silently. As much as Mike wanted to go out there and check it out as any night guard should, he knew that he would be putting himself in immense danger if he did. As they regularly did, the camera feed began to scramble into static for a few seconds, and when the picture came back, the sound was gone.

As if on que, Mike heard a sound from his right. Chica was just on the other side of the door, staring blankly at him through the frosted window. Just as she began to turn the doorknob, Mike threw on the Freddy head and held still, facing her. The door creaked as it swung open slowly, revealing a towering, yellow figure wearing a white bib. Chica took a step into the room and stopped, staring at Mike with that same blank grin that they all wore. Flashlight in hand like a gun, Mike was ready to use it if she took another step towards him, but she only stood and stared. This was not how he imagined he would be spending his Friday nights a few weeks ago. There was a shuffle of footsteps from behind the door behind him, and Mike was thankful that he’d already locked it. After what seemed like the longest staring contest of Mike’s life, Chica turned and left the office, but didn’t leave completely. She stood outside the door, facing away from him for several minutes, and Mike watched with wide eyes as her head began to twitch violently. The light in the office flickered slightly, and when it came back on, Chica was gone.

Mike waited a moment before closing the door. The doorknob behind him had been turning and twisting in its slot, but the heavy-duty locks held the door firm. When everything went quiet, Mike, still wearing the head like a protective helmet, rose from his seat and closed the door that Chica had left through. Slowly and carefully, he sat back down in his chair and resumed facing the screen. The head was becoming hot and stuffy, but at the moment it felt safe. Safer than this office alone, at least. Mike checked both of the cameras just outside the office and saw that both corridors were empty. He took off the Freddy head and breathed properly again, feeling the dull breeze from the metal desk fan on his face. 

Mike checked through the feeds, lingering again on the empty backstage area. There were no sounds from it this time. Nothing out of place, nobody there. He must have imagined it. His first week on the job had taken its toll on him, but he was confident that he would get used to it by the end of next week. The night carried on, and at just after 3:00am, everything seemed to stop. An inexplicable feeling of impending doom washed over Mike like a tsunami, and as he quickly tracked the whereabouts of each of the characters, he saw that they were all doing the same thing. They were scattered across the restaurant: Foxy was just outside of the purple curtain of Pirate Cove, Bonnie was now in the supply closet, Chica was standing just outside the restrooms, and Freddy was on the main dining room floor, standing up close to that camera, his shiny eyes gleaming. They were all close up to the cameras, staring intently from their various locations, heads spasming intermittently. A panic rose in Mike’s chest and he rushed to put on the Freddy head, which was now akin to a security blanket. He wasn’t sure what he expected to happen, but he felt that the spare head was his only defence. 

He sat still at his desk, watching the cameras through the eyeholes, heart pounding in his chest in a surge of panic. The feed flickered and glitched quickly from camera to camera and each of the animatronics’ faces flashed up on the screen. He thought he saw words flash on the screen for a second, but it was hard to tell. The light in the office began to sputter and dim, and Mike suddenly felt as though there was someone behind him. He was frozen to the spot, heartbeat pounding in his ears, not sure what was going to happen. Not sure if anything was actually happening at all, or if he was losing his mind. 

There was someone else in the room with him. A child. He could now hear them weeping quietly. Soft, sharp inhalations of barely contained fear and anguish came from behind him, and he didn’t dare turn around. The words flashed up again, this time Mike could see it properly: _IT’S ME!_

The computer on the desk shut down and began to restart with a beep, while the office and corridor lights flickered on and off before settling once again. The weeping was gone, and Mike felt that a deep sorrow had replaced his fear. What had happened in this place? The animatronics on the screen went back to normal, resuming their usual scripted actions, although more active tonight than they were at the start of the week. 

At last, the characters moved back to the stage and took their usual positions as Mike’s shift drew to an end. Mike stood to leave. His head was heavy, and he realised that he was still wearing the Freddy head, which he then took off and placed it inside the locker behind him. He was exhausted. He left the office deep in thought and emotionally drained. The pink light from the rising sun shone over the empty parking lot outside and in through the front door. Mike stepped out as the morning guard pulled up in his car to take over. He wondered if the weekend guy would have the same experience that he had just had. Mike’s spirits lifted as the breathed in the fresh air and the morning sun slowly rose. 

He had just finished his first five nights at Freddy’s.


	9. Part 2: Chapter 1

** Part 2: The Bite of ‘87 **

**1**

The restaurant was filled with noise and was bustling with activity as children ran between the long tables covered with half empty pizza trays, chasing each other through the main dining room with party hats on their heads like paper horns. One child was chasing the others while wearing a party hat on each hand, wielding them like knives. The older kids had quickly gone into the arcade and were trying to get their hilariously original acronyms onto the high score of the pinball machines. The outnumbered parents sat at the tables looking around at the scene, their eyes constantly drawn to the movements coming from the stage.

The three animatronics, Bonnie, Freddy, and Chica, all lit up with the bright colours from the stage lights, danced and moved jaggedly _almost_ in sequence to the music that was playing from the stage speakers. Occasionally, a child would approach the stage and stare up at them in awe. Freddy, being the closest, would then turn his head down towards them and raise his left hand to wave while still singing into the microphone in his right. Impressed by this, the child then ran back and forth, gathering the others to show them this neat trick over and over again as they ran to the stage and waved enthusiastically at the characters. Soon, all of the children were crowded by it in a mini mosh pit trying to get reactions out of the animatronic characters. A waitress walked halfway towards them and called out not to get too close, while she herself kept a healthy distance from the creatures. The song ended and the children dispersed, resuming their party hat chase game throughout the tables.

Fritz Smith leaned back in his office chair with a slight grin on his face as he watched this scene play out on the camera. It was just after 2:00pm, Monday afternoon. Fritz had just started his shift and was settling in for the day. The mini fridge was stocked with his usual meals. A soda cup with a straw poking out of the top sat on the desk next to a small plush Freddy teddy bear. The next song had started, an electronic tune reminiscent of an old twelve-bar Chuck Berry song and was echoing its way down the corridors towards the office. Fritz hummed along as he switched through the feeds, pausing briefly on Pirate Cove before returning to the main stage area.

Fritz had worked at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza for more than a decade. He was there at the old location, back when the place was really starting to boom with popularity. Back when there were many more characters, all shiny and new and state-of-the-art. Back when the place had a bright future. He was there during the bad times and had seen the company struggle with its image and its reputation ever since. It should have been a huge franchise by now. There should have been locations spread out all across the state. Fritz loved children and he lamented what had happened in the past. Seeing those kids at the stage interacting happily with the animatronics warmed Fritz’s heart as it reminded him of the potential this place once had. Of what this place was supposed to be.

Just as he was about to turn away from the screen to refill his soda cup, he stopped and did a double take. Someone familiar had entered through the front door and was slowly walking through the dining room, dressed in a dark hoodie and jeans, seeming to hide his face from the characters on the stage. It was Mike Schmidt. He was due to collect his paycheque on the weekend, but presumably had been avoiding this place as much as he could.

Fritz watched him walk past the arcade entrance, stop a few times as small children ran in front of him, then make his way past Pirate Cove down the corridor towards the manager’s office. The manager wasn’t there, but there was an envelope in a small pigeonhole with Mike’s name on it. Once Mike collected his cheque ($120.00), he exited the office and turned to close the door. He heard a faint sound behind him and when he turned around, he jumped with a gasp as he saw Freddy standing right behind him. How had he left the stage so quickly without him being alerted? Fritz started laughing from behind the mask and took it off, gesturing for Mike to come into the security office.

“Sorry about that,” Fritz said, quickly shoving the head back into the locker with a grin. “You just looked really tired, that’s all. I thought I could wake you up.”

“I’m definitely awake now!” Mike responded as he entered the office. He glanced the half full bottle of waste under the desk that he forgot to empty at the end of his last shift. He now prayed that Fritz wouldn’t knock it over. Fritz offered Mike a cup of soda as he took a full bottle from the mini fridge and began to refill his own on the desk.

“Are you busy?” Fritz asked as he put the bottle back into the mini fridge. “I feel like we haven’t really had a chance to talk properly. If the boss comes in and asks what we’re doing, I’m just training you up on some things.”

“Sure,” Mike replied, leaning back onto the table next to the mini fridge. The very place he was sure someone was standing only a few nights ago. “What’s up?”

Fritz’s smile faded away as he sunk back into the desk chair. He watched Mike closely, seemingly choosing his next words carefully. Then he leant forwards and peered at him over his glasses. “You know… you remind me of someone I used to work with.”


	10. Part 2: Chapter 2

**2**

“How long have you been in Hurricane, Mike?” Fritz asked, holding his soda cup in one hand, straw poking up like an antenna. He faced Mike directly, his attention on the screen now long gone. 

“About a month.” Mike replied, his eyes drawn to the screen behind Fritz.

“So, you hadn’t really heard about Freddy Fazbear’s and all of that?”

“No, not really. The name’s familiar. Maybe from some commercials from when I was a kid, but that’s about it.” Mike took a sip from his soda cup and sat himself down properly onto the small table. 

“That makes sense. This place was huge for a while in the 80’s. And then everything just changed so quickly. Mostly because of the bite. There was some other stuff going on at that same time, but the bite was what everyone saw.” Fritz took a sip from his drink and placed it back on the table. “Oh man, where to start.”

Fritz leaned back in his chair, swayed gently side to side and stared off into the distance at somewhere beyond the security office. “So, this place started out as a diner up in New Harmony. Fredbear’s Family Diner, I think it was called. This was in the 70’s. Back then, the only characters where a bear and a rabbit. Both of them were yellow. They danced and sang on a small stage at one end of the diner. I remember going there as a kid and thinking the whole thing was amazing. That place did really well and after a few years the diner moved to a bigger location here in Hurricane. When that place opened, they had four new animatronics. The guys you see on the stage back there, they are the old original characters from back then.” 

Fritz turned to the screen and watched the characters on the stage as they moved around in their repeated actions, the camera panning left to right. 

“For a while, there were six of them all crammed into that place, all singing and dancing and interacting with the customers. The four that we know today were really just side characters then, not really named. It was more of a ‘Fredbear and Friends’ sort of thing. Hell, the yellow rabbit was the original Bonnie.” Fritz scratched his head, thinking. “Then, I guess the old yellow ones must have gotten retired or something, because one day the diner was closed for weeks and when it was open again, the two yellow characters were gone and they had rebranded as Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza and put our Freddy up centre stage. The blue rabbit became Bonnie, and the other characters were named Foxy and Chica. This was in ’83, I think. Anyway,” Fritz turned back to Mike “A few years later, that place closes and a new restaurant opened up. The new and improved Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza!” Fritz proclaimed, waving a hand in the air. “This was mid ’87. And let me tell you, that place was fantastic. I got a job there not long after it opened, and there was a lot of hiring going on.”

“That place was bustling,” Fritz said with a gleam in his eye. “And not just with customers. There were so many new characters roaming around! Brand-new, state of the art, advanced robotics. They were even tied into the police database, so they could spot a predator a mile away. The old ones from the diner were originally brought in and it was rumoured that they were being retrofitted with the new technology, but they were so old and ugly, you know? And the smell! And the company had already spent a small fortune on those new animatronics. All of the characters had new replacements which we referred to as toys. Speaking of toys,” Fritz reached back and picked up the small plush Freddy from the desk and gave its nose a squeeze, making it squeak. 

“I won this guy in the prize corner. Hung on to him ever since. So, Toy Freddy, Toy Bonnie and so on. They were going to make a toy version of Foxy as well, but they decided that he looked too creepy to the smaller kids. In the end, they brought in a Funtime Foxy from the sister location to use for a while. That place had a whole Funtime range that they leased out for parties as well. I tell you, that new Foxy didn’t stand a chance against the toddlers of Kid’s Cove. By the end of each day, the staff had to put it back together again. They started calling it The Mangle. There were a couple new characters as well, but I can’t really remember who they were.”

“So, one of the night guards started complaining about certain… conditions during his shift. Saying that the characters would try to get into his office. As far as the engineers could tell, that should have been impossible. The working theory at the time was that they weren’t given a proper night mode, so when it got quiet at night, they thought they were in the wrong room. So, they’d search the place for people to entertain. Which at night was just him. It really freaked him out. So, we moved him to the day shift, and he was replaced by a guy named Jeremy.” He placed the plush Freddy back down on the desk and thought for a moment. “How old are you, Mike?”

“Twenty-two.” Mike replied, sipping from his straw, listening intently.

“Yeah, so Jeremy was your age. I don’t know what was going on, but as the week progressed, the characters just stopped acting right. They were great with the kids during the day, but if any adults got too near, they would just… stare. It was really creepy, you know? The company thought that someone had tampered with their facial recognition software. Also, at this time, there were rumours of children who had gone missing that were last seen at the restaurant. There were police investigating, questioning everyone …especially the security staff. I was questioned once or twice, but I didn’t know anything about what they were talking about. The guy that Jeremy replaced ended up uh, …having to leave, and Jeremy was meant to move to the day shift after he finished his first week. Which he did finish, but man he looked rattled by the end of it. He said that even the old animatronics that were kept in the back were getting up and wandering around at night.”

Fritz paused for a moment, as if seeing the events unfolding clearly in front of him. A shadow had crossed his eyes, that usually jovial look now gone.

“He was meant to do one more shift. A day shift, before the place was closed for the investigation. It was a Sunday, and there was a birthday party booked with us. It looked like it was going to be a big day. Jeremy walked in, dressed in his guard uniform and made his way to the office. He got halfway down the hallway between the party rooms when Foxy, the old one from out back which we thought was turned off, saw him and just lunged at him from down the corridor. Now, that place was usually pretty loud, but there was no mistaking the screaming that we heard. We got to him quickly, but the place was already a mess. Foxy was on top of him and had bitten right into his head. The amount of blood that comes out of the human head is phenomenal. Jeremy thrashed, then there was this… cracking sound and he went still. That incident shut the place down and destroyed the reputation that had already been hanging by a thread. They had me on the night shifts there for the next few days as they closed the place down and sorted out the animatronics. I was on nights at this place at the start, but they eventually moved me on to the day shift, and I’m now one of the longest lasting security staff here.”

Mike had nothing to say. Foxy had already run down the corridor of this place towards him, but luckily, he had a door he could lock. The knowledge of what Foxy might do to him if he caught him made him shudder, especially when he thought about how close he had gotten to him a few days ago, and how many times he had walked past Pirate Cove during the week. Fritz looked up and resumed his story.

“Jeremy lived, although I don’t think you could call that living. The place lost a tonne of money and had to close that location down. Then they opened this place, reused the old animatronics and reprogrammed them to stay on the stage during the day. They weren’t sure what to do with Foxy, though. They wanted to salvage as much as they could… maybe use him for special occasions. All of the test runs were good, but his jaw would sometimes malfunction and hang open, which was a constant reminder, you know? In the end, they just threw up an OUT OF ORDER sign and closed the curtain. He should be turned off, but it always pays to check on him.”

There was silence as Mike processed the story he had just heard. The cheerful music from the main dining room felt like a farce. Pretend.

“Looks like I rambled on a bit,” Fritz said. “You just reminded me of him before, when you came in and walked through the dining room, staying away from the animatronics and then going straight past Foxy. It just brought it all back.” Fritz sipped from his straw again and turned back to the screen. 

Mike stood up. “Well, I’d uh… better get going. Got to get ready for my shift tonight.”

“Okay. Look, you’ll be fine. Mondays are the easiest.”

Freddy’s deep, booming laugh resounded from the stage, but sounded perfectly in place amongst the music and noisy children. Mike felt for his paycheque in his pocket and turned to leave, taking the corridor on the right, making sure to avoid Foxy on his way out.


	11. Part 2: Chapter 3

**3**

With his pay cashed at the bank and his rent and groceries sorted out, Mike sat in his living room and stared at the TV without really watching it, waiting out the afternoon. Week two. The job itself didn’t really worry him anymore. He had gotten through his first week and had picked up some tricks along the way. The job wouldn’t worry him at all if he could be sure that the animatronics were just that: Animatronics. But as the week had progressed, he felt more and more certain that there was something else to them. Their quirks could be explained away by poor programming, but working there alone at night, Mike was sure he felt a deep anger from them. It may have been his imagination, he reasoned, and he might have believed it at the start of the week, but after Fritz’s story about the Bite of ’87, he was certain that there was more to the story than what he was told.

No, what did worry him about the job was that their actions could not be that of bad programming alone. If an animatronic saw what it thought was an unclad endoskeleton, one of its own, why would it maul it with what could only be described as primal rage? If one of them mistook Mike in his office for an endoskeleton, would they lunge at him like a wild animal, teeth bared, or drag him away to the backstage area to stuff him into a suit via their programming like Fritz had suggested?

What worried Mike now about this job was the new questions that the story had given him. A night guard was transferred to day shift after complaining about the characters’ actions at night, and the new guy, Jeremy, who was hired to replace him was attacked viciously a week later. Many people were there every day, adults and children alike, but only the guy doing the night security shift was targeted. Even after arriving during the day in uniform. Did they target only the night guards, or Jeremy in particular? Mike doubted that it was just Jeremy, based on his own experience with Foxy. It must be anyone holding the night guard position that they despised. But what brought this on? Perhaps they had a memory of one guard in particular. _They were great with the kids, but when an adult got too close, they would just… stare._ They were also linked up with the police criminal database, but what if that was tampered with? One of the night guards must have been on that database. 

Mike lifted the remote control and turned the TV off. As the screen went black, he saw a large, costumed figure standing in the corner behind him, but when he turned to look at it, he saw that it was only his jacket hanging from a hook on the wall behind him. “Man, I’m seeing ghosts.” Mike said to himself.

He stood up from the couch and walked over to the fridge, convincing himself that he was overthinking it. What’s more likely? Vengeful animatronic kids’ characters, or a programming glitch? He opened the fridge and pulled out some fresh vegetables to make a proper, healthy meal. The first one he’d had in a while. But his mind wouldn’t completely leave the story that Fritz had told him. He wondered how much he really needed this job and weighed up how dangerous it actually was for him. It can’t be that bad, Fritz had been working there for years and had started off doing nights. Mike looked at the fresh groceries that he had laid out on the kitchen bench, looked around at his small apartment, and conceded. He needed the pay. 

The daylight began to fade as night crept slowly across the evening sky. A soft patter of rain drizzled against the windows and Mike listened to it as he slowly got changed into his work uniform. The days were getting shorter and he was coming into the days of not seeing any sunlight at all, which he was beginning to accept. If this was his life now, so be it. He opened the front door and stood, embracing the cool, light droplets on his face as they were pushed towards him by the light breeze. With a deep breath, Mike closed the front door behind him and locked it, then turned and headed down the street, walking under the glowing streetlights towards the bus stop. 

***

Mike’s second week crept on slowly, the night shifts beginning to blur together. Walking across that dark parking lot towards the large brick building every night had lost none of its effect on the butterflies in his stomach, but the job was becoming easier. As he got more comfortable with the place, Mike began doing the intended two rounds per night, just to speed up the shifts. He would do one at 10:30pm just after hearing Jen leave, and then another at 11:30pm. Mostly, Mike did it as a way to stretch his legs. Sitting at a desk staring at a screen for six hours a night did no favours for his posture or his eyes. He started to take his time with his rounds, walking slowly down the corridors and really taking in the details of the place. The tiled floors, the grey, concrete walls, the ever lingering smell of pizza in the air. The animatronics never moved or gave any indication of life before midnight, and Mike was getting comfortable walking in their view before then. He was now taking the time to look closer at the cartoon drawing on the walls, and he also had a morbid curiosity about whether any of the drawings depicted the Bite. 

After the events of his Friday shift, Mike was also spending more time during his rounds checking the backstage area, making sure there were no children hiding back there. He was sure of what he had heard on the camera, though he had told no one about it. He would open the door and step in, sweeping his flashlight from one side to the next, seeing only what looked to him like dissected cartoon cadavers strung up across the room on display. There were animatronic heads on the shelves grinning up at him like empty skulls, limbs and torsos splayed out on the large bench in the middle of the room, and what looked like endoskeleton parts on a shelf opposite him. He would have called out as he did his sweep, but he didn’t think he would be able to handle somebody calling back to him from the empty room. A voice that he honestly thought he might hear.

At the beginning of his Wednesday night shift, while walking back toward his office after completing a round, Mike stopped and did a doubletake at one of the crayon drawings. He was fairly familiar with the cartoon images that lined the walls of the pizzeria, characters made up of circles and lines, so he noticed when one along the corridor seemed out of place. It was one he had seen many times, a drawing done in black crayon of Bonnie the Bunny hugging a child. Except this time when Mike shone his light across it as he walked by, it depicted a different image.

Looking closely at it, it now showed the child facing away from Bonnie. Wasn’t he hugging Bonnie before? Mike took it from the wall and looked closer at it. Bonnie was now reaching towards the child, with the child facing away. Mike blinked. Maybe he hadn’t noticed every drawing in this place yet, or maybe this was a new one from the previous day. The childish image had a subtle undertone to it which made him feel sick to his stomach, though Mike didn’t know why. He folded it and continued towards the office, before the free-roaming mode released the animatronics.

The Thursday night shift began much the same way. Mike did his first round of the night, checked all the doors, and confirmed that there were no people left in the building. The characters stood on the stage, once again staring straight ahead of them. Throughout his shifts, they moved about quite regularly, but he was becoming used to that. It was less eerie than it was when he started and was mostly predictable, but they occasionally did unusual things that kept him on edge.

Mike had just checked the backstage area for the night and was crossing the main dining room on his way back to the office. He didn’t walk down the corridor that went past Pirate Cove unless he absolutely had to. When he was about halfway across the room, walking between two of the long tables, he saw a sheet of paper fall from the wall ahead of him, next to the door to the bathrooms. Mike approached it and picked it up.

It was a drawing that he hadn’t seen before, and one that instantly made his blood run cold. It was a drawing of Foxy, with his eye patch and hook, standing behind and adult character who had a badge drawn on his chest. Mike looked down at the sewn-in shield on his security guard shirt and spun around to look over at Pirate Cove and saw one of the purple curtains swaying gently left and right. Mike then heard a soft pop from the fuse box and the whole building went black as the power went out.


	12. Part 2: Chapter 4

**4**

Panic. Blackness surrounded Mike like a thick fog, the only relief coming from the dull glow of the parking lot light as it shone weakly through the front door. Instinct told him to be very still and very quiet, and to listen. This shouldn’t be happening, Mike thought. It’s nowhere near midnight yet. They should all be stuck onstage. Mike could hear a quiet shuffling from the other side of the room, right in front of Pirate Cove. It was moving towards him. As quietly as he could, Mike stepped to his left, towards the kitchen doors. The sound on the other side of the room went quiet for a few seconds, then resumed again, making their way through the long tables. As it got nearer, Mike thought he could hear a soft clicking sound coming from it. Mike stepped again, hoping that the darkness was as debilitating to Foxy as it was to him.

The fuse box. Mike needed to get over there and replace it before he could do anything else. He could try making a break for it through the front door, but it was locked and would take too long to open. Foxy would also see him in the faint light. Right now, darkness was his friend. Mike reached out to his left and felt the cool metal of the kitchen door. Next was to go straight ahead and pass by the arcade. He could go down and pass through the security office, but the red emergency light would be on there, and Mike wanted to be invisible.

Shuffling. Further to the right, now. Mike had an idea, but it might be a foolish one. He lifted the flashlight and aimed it straight ahead. He needed to make sure the path ahead of him was clear, so he wouldn’t bump into anything. He turned the light on, but only for a second. The path ahead of him was clear. The large entryway of the arcade was gaping ahead on the left and a row of chairs lined up neatly on the right along a long table. Before he turned the light off, a slight glimpse of movement appeared just on the edge of the light beam from the other side of the room. Darkness returned and the shuffling resumed, quicker this time, towards Mike’s location.

Quietly, Mike bent down and crawled forwards, flashlight in his mouth, making each step as quiet as possible. It was on his right now, just on the other side of the table and had almost passed him when Mike accidently bumped into one of the chairs. He wasn’t moving as straight as he thought he was. The shuffling stopped and Mike could hear more soft clicks coming from the other side of the table. It had heard him. Hoping that he was in line with the games arcade, Mike stepped to his left into it and nestled himself in between two of the pinball machines, feeling carefully along as he did. Mike held still, hoping that he was hidden well, eyes not adjusting to the pitch-black darkness around him. The shuffling sound made its way quickly around the long table and approached where Mike was a moment ago. The chair that he bumped into creaked along the floor as it was moved a few more times, then there was nothing but silence. He’s listening for me, Mike thought to himself. And he’s not leaving. 

Mike waited, aware that midnight was approaching. Soon all of the animatronics would be active and roaming the building. He had to get the power back on and get into the office. Still Mike waited, but he never heard it move away. He was cornered. He had one thing left to try. It was dangerous, but he simply couldn’t stay here. He raised the flashlight and felt for the button. He steadied his nerves, and pressed repeatedly, flicking the light on and off rapidly, then stopped. There was nothing there. Hands shaking, the flashlight dropped out of his hands and rolled away, the light casting a narrow beam through the legs of the pinball machines. Mike scrambled for it and grabbed it, aiming it at the arcade entryway again.

Slowly and shakily, Mike stood from his hiding spot between the machines and walked back into the dining room, shining the light across the room. The three animatronics were still on the stage, staring above him, seemingly unaware of what was happening in front of them. He crept towards the fuse box, keeping his light fixed on the curtains of Pirate Cove. Mike opened the fuse box and pulled out the MAIN fuse. It was one of the ones he had repaired last week, but it looked like he hadn’t done it very well. He put another of the spares in, hoping that this one would work better and flicked the ON switch. The security lights came back on, partially lighting the place. Still feeling vulnerable and in the open, Mike wasted no time heading back to the familiarity of the security office, where the doors locked, and he had full view of the place.

***

Mike didn’t plan on doing any rounds at the start of his Friday shift. He no longer felt familiar with the place and could not reliably predict the actions of the characters. The rounds never turned up anything unusual, anyway. He intended to just stay in his office where it was safe. He wasn’t sure of himself anymore, or if half of the things happening here were real or in his head. When he got back into the office the previous night, he later found that he couldn’t find the drawing of Foxy on any of the cameras. Last he remembered, he dropped it near the bathroom door when the power went out but had since been unable to find it anywhere.

Tonight, he sat in his office flicking through the camera feeds as he usually did, waiting for midnight for when he really had to pay attention. Everyone was in their usual places, and everything looked the same. Mike turned away to retrieve a sandwich from the mini fridge, and when he turned back, saw that the camera feed had turned to static. Frustrated, Mike switched through the feeds, trying to find one that worked. He wacked the monitor and an image appeared. It was the feed from the backstage area. Mike looked closer.

There was someone, or something there that he didn’t recognise. On the floor directly in view of the camera sat what looked like an empty costume, propped up against the shelves with the spare heads and parts on them. It looked almost exactly like Freddy, but paler. Its eyeholes were empty, and its mouth was hanging open, its limp form slumped over slightly with its arms flopped on each side. It wore a small top hat and held a microphone in its right hand like Freddy had. Mike felt himself breaking into a cold sweat as he stared at the empty suit, its eyeless face staring right back at him through the camera. Then he heard it. Just like last time, he could hear that gentle weeping of a child from inside that room. The feed flickered and jumped. When the picture returned, the suit was gone. Mike looked over at the clock. It was only 11:20pm. Plenty of time to check it out. His instincts were telling him not to go anywhere, to stay in the office. But this felt important. He had been drawn to that room all week, and this time he was going to search it properly.

Mike exited the office via the right-hand corridor and made his way to the main dining room. He stopped and shone the flashlight at the animatronics and at Pirate Cove, ready to flicker the light at them if they showed any movement. He passed by them undisturbed and entered the backstage area. The room looked how it always did. Spare parts in their assorted places. Heads lined up on the shelves. Mike stepped up to where he saw the suit and turned towards the camera up in the corner. This is the spot. This is where the suit was sitting.

Mike walked a lap around the room, shining the light around the place as he did. His ears were strained for any sound, any voice that he might hear. There was nothing. He returned to where he saw the suit. What was he looking for? What was he missing? He thought about how the suit was positioned, then sat down where it was and looked around again. Everything looked much the same. There was nothing down low that he missed the first time. Unsure of what to do now, he flicked his arms out, almost mimicking the suit’s pose. Then he felt his right hand brush against something. He turned and aimed the flashlight at it.

On the bottom shelf at the back was what looked like an old paper magazine. Mike pulled it out and looked at it properly. It was an instruction manual for some old suit, the date at the top corner reading 197- with the last number torn away at the edge. The letters were faded, but Mike could just make out the words SPRINGLOCK SUIT INSTRUCTIONS. Mike stood up and took it with him back to the security office for later reading. He had no idea what it was about, but he felt like he needed to have it. Like _they_ needed him to have it. He sat at the desk and looked at the clock. It was almost midnight. Time to pay attention.


	13. Part 3: Chapter 1

** Part 3: The Missing Children **

**1**

At the end of his shift, Mike walked slowly through the empty parking lot towards the bus stop. The suit instruction manual was tucked into his backpack for later reading when he got home, but his exhaustion was beginning to hit him hard and now all he wanted to do was sleep. He stood at the bus stop and waited, watching the early birds pass him by as the early morning frost gnawed at his fingers. Shop owners were arriving, opening up their stores and pulling out their signs. The sun was rising, slowly breaking through the dark sky above him, and Mike lingered at the thought that his life and theirs were on two different sides of the same coin, only meeting briefly at twilight. They were just beginning their day. His was over.

He was the only passenger on the bus ride home, and the sound of the engine and the swaying movements almost put him to sleep. It was peaceful. When he arrived at his street, Mike entered his apartment and threw off his boots and backpack and turned on his heater to dull the chill in the air. He was tired and hungry, but still somewhat wired from the previous shift. He put a frozen pizza in the oven and sat down on the couch and waited for it to cook. His eyes slowly closed, and his head eventually fell to the side, jerking him awake. He opened his eyes and saw his backpack on the floor near the entrance. The manual.

Mike stood and retrieved the old paper booklet from his backpack and sat back down on the couch. He flicked through the pages, seeing mostly step by step instructions and measurements. What caught his tired eyes were the first pages that had two diagrams on them, each with a front and side view of the old suits. The one on the left was labelled ‘Bonnie’, the one on the right ‘Fredbear’. Mike looked carefully at them. 

The Bonnie suit looked like the one Mike knew at the pizzeria, but it had no big bowtie and its face was less cartoony. Its head looked more like a human skull, and the widely grinning teeth must have been terrifying to small children. Unless kids were tougher back in the day, Mike supposed. The ‘Fredbear’ suit looked almost exactly like Freddy Fazbear, with the same exaggerated facial features. Though the pages were faded, Mike could see that both characters were yellow. Mike turned the page. The page on the left showed the Bonnie suit with the same front and side view, but these showed the inside of the suit, with the animatronics pieces all marked with arrows pointing to crank points. The page on the right showed the same, but with the animatronic parts pulled back into the side of the suit, leaving the inside hollow. The next page over showed the same but for the Fredbear suit.

Mike studied these diagrams until the ping of his oven timer broke him out of his trance. He stood with a groan and collected his hot dinner, then promptly sat back down on the couch and resumed reading through the manual. The next page began with operating the mascots when they were in animatronic form.

‘ _For ease of operation, the animatronics are programmed to turn and walk towards sound cues. This ensures the animatronics remain where the children are and maintaining maximum crowd-pleasing value.’_

The next few pages went into detail about the software programming involved, different pre-set functions and settings that they had, and troubleshooting. The next page was about converting them.

_‘To change the animatronics to suit mode, insert and turn firmly the crank provided by the manufacturer. Turning the crank will recoil and compress the animatronic parts around the sides of the suit, providing room to climb inside. Please ensure that the springlocks located around the inside of the suit are fastened tight to ensure that the animatronic parts remain fixed. When positioning your head and torso between these parts, avoid nudging or pressing against the springlocks. Do not touch the springlocks at any time. If any malfunctions occur, contact manufacturer.’_

The remainder of the pages showed close up diagrams of the crank points with detailed measurements and number of cranks needed to lock the parts in place against the springlocks. Too many turns and the parts will pull away from the locks, releasing them.

Mike put the booklet down on the coffee table and leaned back with a sigh. He wondered if maybe he was supposed to find the booklet, that he was being guided by some consciousness within the old restaurant. But this manual was for old suits long since retired. The animatronics characters up on the stage weren’t like these. They were robotic endoskeletons dressed up in character suits. 

Rubbing his eyes, Mike felt the rush of the past shift finally wear away, leaving him exhausted. After scoffing down the piping hot pizza and burning the roof of his mouth, Mike got up from the couch, hoped that the neighbours weren’t going to get into any big arguments today, and went to bed.

***

_He was standing still in the dark. His breathing was loud in his ears, the air around him dusty and dull. He was wearing the empty Freddy head. Looking around, his eyes slowly cut through the blackness to reveal a familiar setting. Rows of long tables, each lined with party hats lay before him. He was on the main stage where the animatronics usually were. Slowly, he realised that he wasn’t just wearing the Freddy head. He was wearing a full suit. One of the old spring lock suits. He raised his arms and saw two large, yellow hands, the right one holding onto a microphone. Fredbear. His eyes scanned the dining hall. Where were they?_

_Careful not to move too quickly, he turned his head slowly to the left. He was standing right next to Freddy Fazbear, Chica standing further away. Both were staring straight ahead. He turned his head to the right, careful not to jolt the suit. Bonnie was on his right but wasn’t looking straight ahead like the other two. His eyes were locked onto him, his head only slightly turned in his direction. Heart pounding, he turned back to face the other two. They were both facing him directly, and Mike saw Freddy’s body turning to face him as well. They were all still. Maybe the suit was working._

_A quiet clicking sound came from somewhere within Freddy, and then a quiet music box began to play. A light within Freddy’s head flickered and lit up, lighting up his eyes and the inside of his mouth. As the tune played, he could see Chica behind Freddy slowly turning her body towards him as well. Bonnie was probably doing the same. The tune wound down and the light within Freddy’s head faded. All went quiet._

_Suddenly, a horrific shriek filled his ears as he was violently knocked to the ground. He hit the floor hard as he fell off the stage. The old Fredbear suit snapped rapidly and repeatedly as each spring lock released, forcing the animatronic parts into his organs. The shriek in his head became clearer and began to sound like crying children. The sound filled his head. The pain from his body was immense, and he could no longer move._

Mike woke in his bed, trapped in his tangled and twisted sheets unable to compose himself. He had had strange nightmares about them before, but none of them had been this upsetting. He eventually calmed himself down and thought again of the springlock suit manual that he had found. What did it mean? What was he missing? 

Mike laid back down and stared at the sunlit ceiling, trying to clear his head, but he could not rid himself of the sound of those children all crying at once. All screaming for help.


	14. Part 3: Chapter 2

**2**

The pizzeria had become an obsession for Mike. His thoughts never strayed far from it. When he went there to collect his pay over the weekend, he ended up staying for a while, seating himself at the end of one of the long tables, ordering himself some pizza and watching the animatronic characters on the stage. It was a far cry from the week before when he wanted nothing to do with the place and was actively looking for work elsewhere. Some jobs had come up, too. But now, he had a strange desperation to stay there.

Mike watched the characters as they performed for the children who had crowded below them, the music slowly getting itself stuck in his head. He watched, feeling almost like a friend sitting in the sidelines who had come to cheer them on. They sang and they danced, playing together like the children who adored them from below. He could feel himself becoming possessive of them, but he couldn’t help it. They were _his_ animatronics. They spoke to him.

He must have sat there at that table for well over an hour, and only come out of his trance when the security guard walked past doing his round. It snapped him out of his little world and reminded him that he wasn’t the only guard who worked there. They all had their own perceptions of familiarity with the animatronics as they also came in and saw them every day. But Mike knew that they didn’t know them as well as he did. He knew their quirks. He knew _them_. They spoke to _him._

Begrudgingly, Mike stood up and left the restaurant. Silent whispers from the other staff followed him as he walked towards the front door. They were talking about him. Thought that something was wrong with him. The childish music faded behind him as Mike crossed the half-full parking lot. He would wait impatiently for his next shift, filling his time with errands and bills, keeping the fridge full and the rent paid. He waited, pacing his apartment while humming the songs that they had played, picturing all of them on the stage dancing along. He could see their glinting eyes. There was life behind those eyes. He knew it.

By the time he left to start his first shift for the week, Mike had all but memorised the springlock suit instructions in the manual. He wasn’t sure why they had given him that booklet, but he was sure that it was important.

The night outside was cold with wind, and sheets of rain slapped the windows sporadically. Mike was sitting on his couch, dressed and ready to go, wearing his jacket over his guard uniform and a beanie pulled down on his head. He was staring at his backpack, thinking about the instruction manual inside it. He felt that he would be needing it soon. He looked over at the clock ticking on the wall. It was 9:00pm. Time to go to work.

When Mike arrived at the restaurant that night to start his shift, he found himself annoyed that Fritz and Jen were there having small talk as Fritz waited for Mike to arrive. Just go already, Mike thought to himself while subconsciously clenching his jaw. It’s my turn to be with them. Jen left towards the bathroom as Fritz approached Mike and patted him on the shoulder before he left, saying something encouraging and friendly which Mike didn’t really pay attention to. He was starting to like Jen more. At least she left him alone.

He looked at the characters on the stage and heard the music in his head again. Staring into their eyes, he could almost see that knowing glint behind them. Like there was a secret shared between he and them. The wind outside moaned and whistled as it tried to force its way into the building, seeping through the cracks. Mike almost didn’t hear Jen as she exited the bathroom door with her trolley. She stood for a moment, watching Mike with a look of curiosity mixed with disdain. She didn’t look away as he looked back at her, only giving him a curious stare for a moment before continuing on with her errands. Mike walked slowly down the black and white tiled corridor to his office, footsteps echoing, gazing over the children’s drawings that decorated the walls. The sound of the rain hitting the roof resounded quietly above his stuffy warm office as he sat there, watching the screen. She thought he was crazy. But he knew. They _were_ speaking to him. He was sure of it.

During his following shifts, his fear of the animatronics faded as he monitored them. He was playing a game with them, and they were playing with him. Every time one of them approached the door and he locked them out, he couldn’t help but to now think of it as innocent fun. You can’t get me, he would think to himself. At times, he almost felt like a child again. He would watch the monitors closely, looking for any more messages from them.

The week dragged on slowly with nothing unusual happening, no voices coming from any of the rooms. On a quiet Thursday night, when Mike was skimming over the pages of the springlock suit instruction manual, he heard a strange sound from the computer and looked up to see the screen flickering rapidly. He leaned forward and watched closely. The words ‘IT’S ME!’ flickered up in bright white letters against the dark feed, but only for a moment. The image settled on a feed just outside his office door on the right for a moment, spasming as he watched it. It was a newspaper clipping with a bold, prominent headline, stuck to a corridor wall. It read ‘KIDS VANISH AT LOCAL PIZZERIA – BODIES NOT FOUND’.

The hairs on Mike’s neck prickled. This was it. This was what he had been waiting for. Mike leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head and watched as the image flickered with static and cleared, showing only the crayon drawings on the wall. They showed him the headline. He had some research to do.


	15. Part 3: Chapter 3

**3**

Early the next morning, Mike laid awake in his bed and stared at the ceiling, lost in thought. He was thinking about how much his life had changed in the last few months. How a few twists and turns in his path had led him to here. After dropping out of the university in Salt Lake City, an old friend from high school, Tim Anderson, offered him a couch to sleep on in Hurricane. Said he could throw some work his way as a labourer with the construction company that he worked for. Mike was hesitant about packing up and leaving for a town that he wasn’t familiar with, but it was better than facing his parents again with their ‘we-knew-you-couldn’t-do-it’ smugness as they falsely welcomed him back with open arms, only to reattach their strings to him.

On the way down to Hurricane, Mike half considered just continuing on to Vegas and trying his luck gambling his savings, picturing the tall, shiny buildings that promised riches as if they weren’t built on the losses of the desperate. No. Better to stay with Tim and his girlfriend, Sarah for a while and see if the job lined up for him could pay off into something more permanent. So, Mike went to Hurricane and tried to settle in with his old friend. 

The living arrangements weren’t comfortable. It was a tiny apartment, much like the one Mike’s lived in now, and having a third person there made the place even smaller. The work was inconsistent, there was resentment and stress about how much Mike should be contributing to the bills, and Tim and Sarah were beginning to argue through slammed doors about petty things that were amplified by the obvious lack of privacy they now had. Mike could take a hint, and often went off for walks into town alone. Eventually, he cashed his last pay from his labouring job and found a new place to live. He and Tim had left on bad terms, and Mike was now wondering if it was time to give him a call again. To ground himself in reality once more.

At some point, while he waded through his thoughts, Mike drifted off to sleep and dreamed about someone he hadn’t thought about in a long time. When he was a child in elementary school, there was a boy who went missing during a class hike through the nearby canyons. Somehow, he had gotten separated from the rest of the group and the teachers and guides hadn’t noticed quickly enough that he was gone. Police were called and a search was conducted, and eventually they found the boy that evening, having fallen down a slope and getting stuck between some boulders. If it had gotten too dark, they may not have found him in time. Mike remembered that day well. He remembered the heat of the sun, and the glare from the sky. He remembered the fear, the uncertainty, the shattering of his word view that these things only happened to ‘other’ people. People far away. He remembered the realisation that children’s safety is often relied upon only by a few distracted adults. He remembered him being found. He remembered the relief and the faces of the boy’s parents. Mike couldn’t imagine being the parent of a missing child.

Mike drifted back into consciousness, hearing the ticking of the clock in the next room. He climbed back out of his bed and went to the bathroom sink to splash some water in his face to wake himself up. The face that looked back at him in the mirror did not look like the one he remembered. It was pale, haggard, and with a surprising amount of stubble which emphasised his bloodshot eyes. After getting dressed and throwing on his jacket and beanie, Mike left his apartment in a hurry and headed into town, the memory of that missing boy spurring him on.

A short bus ride later, he was inside the Hurricane library, sitting at a computer opening up the Yahoo search engine. He typed in the headline that had seared itself into his mind the night before and found a collection of news headlines and article summaries dating from 1987 onwards. The first one was the one he knew already:

**KIDS VANISH AT LOCAL PIZZERIA – BODIES NOT FOUND**

_Two local children were reportedly lured into a back room during the late hours of operation at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza on the night of June 26 th. While video surveillance later identified the man responsible and led to his capture the following morning, the children themselves were never found and are presumed dead._

_Police think that the suspect dressed as a company mascot to earn the children’s trust._

This one was shortly after the grand reopening that Fritz had talked about. There was a photo of the three mascots, but they were the new ‘toy’ ones that Mike hadn’t seen before. Remembering the crayon drawing, Mike opened his backpack and took out the folded paper and opened it. It was the same as it was before. Bonnie the Bunny reaching out to a child that was facing away from him. The cartoon image looked much more sinister this time and Mike suspected that it was because he knew the context now. He folded it and put it away to continue reading the articles on the computer. The next article was from the same year:

**FIVE CHILDREN NOW REPORTED MISSING. SUSPECT CHARGED.**

_Five children are now linked to the incident at Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, where a man dressed as a cartoon mascot lured them into a back room. An earlier missing child case has been linked to the recent incident._

_While the suspect has been charged, the bodies themselves have never been found._

_Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has been fighting an uphill battle ever since to convince families to return to the pizzeria._

_“It’s a tragedy.”_

This article had some statements by the local police chief Clay Bourke stating that this case was very personal to him as he had a son the same age as the missing children who visited the pizzeria often, emphasising that it could have easily been him. The next article was more recent and about the current location:

**LOCAL PIZZERIA THREATENED WITH SHUTDOWN OVER SANITATION**

_Local pizzeria Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has been threatened again with shutdown by the health department with reports of foul odour coming from the much-loved animal mascots._

_Police were contacted when parents reportedly noticed what appeared to be blood and mucus around the eyes and mouths of the mascots._

_The animatronics have since been cleaned and sterilised, but the odour was unable to be completely removed._

_One parent likened them to “reanimated carcasses”_

Mike stared at the article on the screen. He knew the smell. The foul odour of the animatronics when he was caught in the same room as them. He hadn’t really thought about what caused it before. He scanned the article again and his eyes landed on the words “ _reanimated carcasses_ ”. It was all clicking into place, what they wanted him to know. 

He thought back on what Fritz had said to him almost two weeks ago. _One of the night guards started complaining about certain… conditions during his shift. Saying that the characters would try to get into his office. As far as the engineers could tell, that should have been impossible._ This was the same year as these newspaper articles, Mike thought to himself as he read over the story. _There was some other stuff going on at that same time, but the bite was what everyone saw._

A night guard was charged with the disappearances of the children after the animatronics started to misbehave and act aggressively towards him. He gets replaced by Jeremy and then Jeremy gets bitten. This targeting of the night guards put further scrutiny on the man who was charged.

Mike leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, thinking. A foul odour coming from the animatronics. Blood and mucus around the eyes and mouth. A springlock suit manual found in the backstage area. He knew what they wanted him to do. He was sure of it. 

Before closing the webpage, Mike spotted another article from the current year:

**LOCAL PIZZERIA SAID TO CLOSE BY YEAR’S END**

_After a long battle to stay in business after the tragedy that took place there many years ago, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza has announced that it will close by year’s end._

_Despite a year-long search for a buyer, companies seem unwilling to be associated with the company._

_“These characters will live on. In the hearts of kids- these characters will live on.” - William Afton, CEO_

They certainly kept that quiet, Mike thought to himself. He only had just over a month to find out if he was right. If the manual was relevant to the characters, the first thing he had to do when he got back to work was find the hand crank for the spring suits.

He logged out and left the library, ambling slowly in the direction of his apartment as his exhaustion caught up with him at last. It was nearly 10:00am Friday morning. He had a lot of sleep to catch up on before his next shift.


	16. Part 3: Chapter 4

**4**

Mike entered the restaurant to start his Friday shift. He was unkempt and obviously distracted, his attention seeming to often wander. He closed the front door behind him, turned and saw Fritz approaching him, a query on his face.

“Hey, Mike…” Fritz looked him up and down, unsure if he wanted to ask the following question. “Something has just come up… I was wondering if you would mind coming in tomorrow night? You’ve been handling this job pretty well, I think. I understand if you’re unable to do it… it is very short notice. But hey, bonus sixth night for the week! That’s overtime in your pay! Just do what you’ve been doing, and you should be golden!”

Ordinarily, Mike would have felt a mixture of dread at being asked and an obligation to say yes, no matter what. Tonight however, the timing couldn’t have been more perfect. He agreed.

“Absolutely. I can do that!”

“Oh, that’s great. Hey, listen… Once you finish this week, we might put you on the day shift for a while. I know personally how isolating this job can be at night. After all, it’s just you here with these guys walking around. Sometimes it feels like they’re holding you hostage, other times it feels like they’re your best friends. Kind of like that Stockholm syndrome, huh?”

Mike looked at him, trying to mask his fury. How dare you take me away from them! They need me! They _are_ my friends!

“Okay, sure. That sounds great…”

Fritz looked relieved. He of all people could see what was happening to Mike and knew how necessary it was to not be isolated with them for too long. It takes a toll on the mind. As soon as Fritz and Jen were gone, Mike made his way to the backstage area and pulled out the instruction manual from his backpack. He opened it to the page depicting the hand crank that he was looking for and began searching.

Under the watchful gaze of the empty spare heads that lined the shelves, Mike scoured the room from top to bottom. The silence of the restaurant was disturbed by his actions as he rifled through everything in the room, but he no longer felt a twinge of guilt. This no longer felt like a sacred place that he was visiting, like it had in his first week. Now, he was their caretaker, and he was here to look after them. He had been there for over an hour and had searched every box of computer chips and wires, every shelf of endoskeleton parts, and every piece of empty suit. The smell of grease and lubricant filled his nostrils as he leaned into the boxes of parts and rummaged around. It was not there.

Checking the time, Mike’s stomach leaped as his watch read 11:57pm. Frustrated, Mike laid down on his stomach and shined his flashlight under the benches in a last-ditch effort to find the crank. He spotted something. Under the bench that ran along the wall below the camera was a metal object glinting in the light. It was right at the back. Mike reached, straining, and pulled it out and compared it to the diagram in the booklet. It was the small hand crank, old and covered in dust. 

Mike checked his wristwatch just as it turned to 12:00am and exited the backstage area quickly, heading straight for his office down the other end of the building. The animatronics on the stage had all turned their heads towards him and were tracking him as he ran. He ducked low as he passed Pirate Cove, never sure if Foxy was going to spring out or not. He made it to the office and checked the doors before sitting down at his desk, heart beating a mile a minute.

He had felt them as he ran past. Felt them as they watched him. They were angry with him. He was too slow and hadn’t found the crank in time. They would have to wait another night.

The lights flickered throughout the building as the animatronics left the stage, making their movements look jagged and harsh. They moved with purpose down the corridors towards the office, seeming to teleport through the blocks of darkness. All Mike could do was watch, helpless as they stood outside the doors. Freddy and Chica stood behind the door on the right, Bonnie on the left. They had never surrounded him so deliberately like this before.

On the screen, Mike could see Foxy standing outside Pirate Cove. He was next to the fuse box and was slowly turning his head towards it. All Mike could do was throw on the empty Freddy head as the office blacked out, the power cutting off. Both doors flew open on either side of him with loud bangs and he was thrown back off his seat onto the floor as he heard terrifying shrieks fill his head. He scrambled backwards until he was leaning up against the locker behind him.

Mike looked around, wide-eyed as he struggled to see through the eyeholes. This was it. He had failed them. They were going to take him.

Instead, the power returned, illuminating the building section by section. He was alone in the office, its doors wide open and the seat in front of him thrown to the side. He was still alive. Mike stood up and closed the doors, trying to figure out what just happened. He took off the head and sat down at the computer, waiting for it to start back up as it beeped and whirred. This was a warning, Mike realised. A reminder of how easily they could get in. A demonstration of their intelligence. They could have taken him at any time all along, but they wanted to see if he could hear them first.

Mike settled himself and checked the locks and cameras. Everything still worked. Everything was normal, and a seed of doubt was creeping into the back of Mike’s mind. He honestly wasn’t sure if they had really barged into his office, or if he had had some kind of episode. His mind was becoming a mess lately, and he wasn’t sleeping properly. Regardless, he hoped that by the end of his Saturday night shift, he and the animatronics would be at peace. He considered himself lucky that he was working the sixth night tomorrow. It was another chance. He had the instruction manual and the hand crank. He was ready.

Leaning back in his seat, Mike resumed his usual routines as the animatronics wandered the restaurant in their free-roam mode, looking for patrons to entertain, seemingly unaware that it was night-time and that they were alone.


	17. Part 3: Chapter 5

**5**

The rain fell hard against the restaurant, the wind howling as it pressed itself against it, shaking the guttering along the roof outside. A thin whistling came through the front door as the cold air fluttered quickly around it. Thunder rumbled overhead as the storm that had been brewing finally broke. It was Saturday night and Mike was alone in the main dining room staring up at the animatronics. In one hand he held the Springlock Suit Manual and in the other he held a satchel of tools that he had found in the backstage area, including the hand crank. A bright flash of lightning illuminated the place and for a split second Mike saw the animatronics’ eyes on him. The dull darkness resumed, and Mike approached the stage.

He slowly made his way behind Freddy, placing himself between all three characters as they stood in their triangular position. Mike squatted down to open the booklet on the floor and studied it with the glow of his flashlight. He needed to look for any slots for the crank to fit into. Running the flashlight over Freddy’s arms and the back of his torso, he looked slowly and carefully at the animatronic. There were no slots of the sort that he was looking for, but he had suspected that they might be hidden. A loud boom of thunder sounded overhead, causing Mike to flinch. Mike shined his light back towards the other animatronics, which were still staring ahead motionless.

Looking again at Freddy’s back, Mike saw six small bolts. There were three on each side, running along the back of his shoulders. Mike pulled a socket wrench out of the satchel and began to unscrew the bolts, one by one, the wrench clicking in the dark with every turn. The back covering of Freddy’s torso loosened at the top but was still attached at the bottom. Mike knelt and found the other bolts and began to loosen them. Once done, the back piece fell to the floor with a soft thud and an old stench wafted out towards Mike. Gagging, he shined the flashlight at the back of the endoskeleton, studying it. There was a square shaped covering on the back of the endoskeleton torso, sealed tight, the edges marked with a thin line of dark red fluid. The smell was foul.

Worried about triggering something unexpected, Mike again shone the light at the other two animatronics to make sure that they hadn’t moved. Both were still in their positions, inactive. Mike returned to studying the endoskeleton’s back, looking for the slots for the hand crank. He eventually found them along the sides, hidden amongst other parts and attachments. Mike checked the Springlock Suit Manual again. The crank points on those old suits were obvious and easy to find. The ones on Freddy looked like the same crank points, but they appeared to be deliberately hidden, designed not to be noticed. With shaky hands, Mike pulled the hand crank out of the satchel and fitted it into the slot. It fit.

A boom of thunder rumbled through the building and the rain pelted heavily against the roof. The walls creaked as they shifted against the gales of wind that were leaning hard against them. Heart pounding in his chest, Mike slowly turned the crank. It was stiff and hadn’t been turned in some time, but with a bit of force, Mike felt the mechanism give and begin to turn. Listening carefully, he heard some of the parts inside moving as they slid into the sides of the torso, creating a cavity inside. It was difficult. Like the parts were sliding through thick mud. After a few turns, Mike felt a click as the lock slid into place and held the parts aside. As carefully as he could, but not quite sure what he was doing, Mike continued on to the next crank point.

Time seemed to slow down, and he was no longer worried about midnight approaching. He had to finish what he had started. All of the cranks on one side were done. Now he just had to do the same to the other side. A sound in the room. Mike swept the flashlight towards the characters on the stage with him, then across the floor towards Pirate Cove. All was still. The wind groaned as it tried to get into the building, and a bright flash of lightning illuminated the room. Mike almost screamed. He could have sworn that for a split second, he saw five children in the room staring intently up at him. They looked like they had been crying, their cheeks wet and streaked with tears. The room was empty in the beam of his flashlight, but he could feel them there. He could feel their sorrow.

Steadying his shaking hands, Mike slid the hand crank into the next slot and began to turn. This one clicked softly just like the others, and so did the next. There were only three left to go. Trying now to hurry, to get it done, Mike slid the hand crank into the next slot and began to turn it quickly. Too quickly. He failed to hear the lock engage, and turned it a quarter turn too far, releasing it again. A loud snap came from inside the endoskeleton and was then followed by several more. Freddy jerked and twitched as each spring lock snapped open again, the internal parts returning to their usual positions.

Everything happened at once. Freddy fell backwards onto the stage floor and stopped twitching, his right arm held up holding the microphone into the air. His mouth had pulled wide open and his eyes spasmed and vibrated in their sockets, before falling still. At the same time, an incredible shriek came from Bonnie and Chica as they jerked violently in their locked positions, seeming to writhe in pain. The sorrow in the air that Mike had been conscious of was immediately replaced with rage. Mike ran. He ran to the only place he felt safe. Locking himself in the security office, Mike pulled on the empty Freddy head and span wildly from door to door. He could still hear them screaming from down the other side of the building, loud bangs coming from the dark stage.

An overwhelming sense of impending doom reached Mike from the front of the building. He had failed them. They were coming for him. There would be no more chances. In a panic, Mike locked the door on his left with the switch and slid the desk to the right to block the door, knocking over the bottle of waste and pulling the computer from the wall in the process, unplugging it. With the door barricaded, Mike looked around wildly for a place to hide, the Freddy head swivelling back and forth on his face. He was climbing into the locker just as a loud explosion of thunder rumbled overhead, causing a blackout. The power cut out and the door on the left unlocked. There he sat, trembling, Freddy head muffling his breath and partially blocking his view, trying to be still. Trying to be hidden. He had pulled the metal locker door closed and was holding it shut, but his fear was overcoming him, and his trembling hands let it slip. 

The animatronics’ mechanical screams from down the corridors got closer as they forced their way towards the office, fighting their programming that was trying to keep them on the stage. Low rumbles of thunder vibrated through the building and into his chest, and then everything went quiet as if he had gone deaf. In the dull silence, Mike could hear it again. The soft weeping of a scared child. The locker door slowly swung open to reveal a yellow mascot suit, sitting empty on the other side of the room, the one he had seen on the camera. Fredbear. It sat opposite Mike, head slumped to the side, its empty eye sockets staring into him. Through the weeps, he could hear a whisper from it. Words. Words begging him to understand. Words of a child trapped in their last moment, reliving it over and over.

“It’s me.”

The words Mike had seen on his screen but had assumed to be a slogan that the mascots would say, like a clown greeting a crowd. Now, these words meant something else. It wasn’t a catchphrase. It was, and had always been, a cry for help. A plea to be found. “It’s me. I’m right here. It’s _ME!_ ” 

Pounding on the doors outside. They had reached him.

***

Mike Schmidt’s employment with Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza was terminated the following day. The morning guard had arrived just before 6:00am and as per company policy, he waited outside until the night guard was safely out. He waited until 6:15am and, beginning to worry, called management with the nearby payphone (also company policy to alert management before the authorities). Mike was found in the office, pale and shaking, cowering on the ground wearing the empty Freddy head. His arm was dislocated and covered in deep gashes, his shirt stained with blood. In his possession they found the crumpled crayon drawing. The old instruction manual and the tools were found under the damaged Freddy animatronic. The three animatronics were standing still in the corridors, deactivated, and were later moved and reassessed by maintenance.

Mike was officially fired for tampering with the animatronics, misuse of company property, such as the spare Freddy head which was returned to the backstage area, and for ‘odour’, that being the bottle of urine that he had knocked over during the night. Due to being terminated for his unprofessionalism and for breaking several rules of his employment, Mike did not receive assistance for his hospital bill for tending to his injured arm. He was banned from returning to the establishment and wasn’t seen near the premises again.

The manager sat in his office down the far end of the restaurant, a resume held up in his hands. A pending new hire sat in front of him, opposite the desk, hoping to start employment. He waited as the manager read over the resume, listening to the joyful music from the main dining room as it made its way down the corridors, muffled against the walls. Hopefully, for the staff’s sake, it didn’t play all day. The manager cleared his throat as he looked up over the resume at the young man, looking him in the eyes. 

“So, Mr. Anderson” the manager began, laying the resume flat on the desk between them. “Are you available for an immediate start?”


	18. Part 4: Chapter 1

** Part 4: William Afton **

**1**

Silence filled the old, empty restaurant. The long tables and chairs had been removed, as had the arcade machines, revealing the entirety of the red and purple tiled floor. The crayon drawings that had brightened the place over the years had also been stripped, revealing the cold grey concrete walls that lined the corridors, now leading to a bare empty office which now looked much smaller than it used to. There would be no faint smell of pizza in the air. There would be no more laughter here. The evening sun was setting over the parking lot, casting a purple light into the quiet building. The restaurant had been fighting to stay open for many years and had now finally closed its doors. Tim Anderson was the last night guard to work at this establishment and had done so under heavy scrutiny, due to the actions of the previous guard and his former housemate Mike Schmidt. There was only one thing left to remove. Something that the owner had wanted to see to himself.

Standing in the middle of the empty dining room under a single spotlight perched on a tall stand, gazing down at the broken, disassembled animatronics at his feet, was William Afton. He was a thin man with grey hair and a permanently etched smirk on his face, put there from years of getting his own way. He was the man in charge of the franchise. The CEO. The owner. But he was not the creator. At least, not the creator of these four creatures that lay in pieces before him. That title went to his old partner, Henry. William looked around at the bare remains of the building, that slight smirk never leaving his face. Henry. It all began with Henry, and his rudimentary machines.

They had been partners once. Back at the start. Back when neither of them had anything, and everything hinged on the success of Henry’s idea. It was Henry who dreamed of opening a pizzeria made entirely for the entertainment of children. Henry loved children, and nothing made him happier than the awe on their faces as they watched his characters up there on the stage. Nothing except his own daughter, Charlotte. It had been Henry who had made the first two characters, Fredbear and Bonnie, and who designed them to be convertible animatronics worn by them whenever the programming wouldn’t meet their needs, or simply failed. Henry made Fredbear to his own measurements, Bonnie to William’s. William was more interested in running his own side project, Afton Robotics. But he was struggling to fund his work and decided to run it as a sister company to Fredbear’s Family Diner. Him paring up with Henry as co-owner was a gamble but paid off when the crowds of families started coming in.

The place boomed with success and after a few years, when they moved from the small diner to a full-size restaurant, Henry had revealed to William his newest creations. The four new animatronics. The bear, the bunny, the chicken, and the fox. These were fully animatronic and were designed to dance on the stage and to carry trays of pizza to the tables of excited children. These four new animatronics showed off Henry’s design and programming abilities as they were fully animatronic and had no need to be worn by any staff. They would not glitch like the older springlock suits. William was impressed by this but became jealous of Henry’s technical abilities. William had always seen himself as the technical one as Henry was always the charismatic showman running the face of the business while William maintained the suits and ran the place behind the scenes.

The new diner was very successful and despite his resentment of his partner, William was happy. They both had young families who were finally well off, and the risks of bankruptcy that came within the first few years of opening any new restaurant were no longer looming over their heads. They had made it. Everything changed however, on the day of his son’s birthday party in 1983. 

The springlock suits were on the stage, fully automated as they had been for some time now. There was hardly any need to wear them anymore as the programming had been improved and had freed up Henry and William’s time to run the restaurant. There was a commotion at the main stage. William’s son, the birthday boy, was being lifted into the air by his older brother Michael and his friends. They were taking him to the stage. Towards Fredbear. He was crying. He didn’t like the characters. They were much too big. “ _Hey guys, I think the little man said he wants to give Fredbear a big kiss!”_ There was laughter at first, but it all went silent as the young boy screamed. He had never screamed like that before. What William heard next would play itself in his mind over and over again. It was a crunch. A sound of skull cracking and giving way. It was the sound of a collective gasp of the horrified onlookers. It was the sound of one of Henry’s rudimentary machines failing. And still, the music played.

The boy did not survive, and William never stopped blaming Henry for his death. If only Henry had been wearing the Fredbear suit that day. Then it wouldn’t have happened. William could never look at his older son, Michael, the same way again. Had it not been a private party, the incident could well have destroyed the restaurant. The media did not get to tell the story, and few people knew much about it, its existence regarded as rumours spread by people trying to make a buck.

The restaurant closed and the old suits were removed, locked away in a back room to be forgotten. It was a tragedy, but the business had to resume. After a brief closure, the company re-opened its doors under the new name of Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza. The four new animatronics, really just robotic wait staff until then, were now the main attraction. They were named and advertised as the new mascots of the franchise. The company carried on. 

William began to hate Henry. It was his fault that William’s son had died. It was supposed to be his happiest day, but Henry’s faulty character was too basic and simple to detect that something was jammed in its mouth. That was Henry’s failing. William should have been in charge of the development of the animatronics. For the rest of William’s life that sound would haunt him. Then the night came where he could fix things. Make the score even again. William had lost a child. Henry would, too.

Little Charlotte had, through some circumstances orchestrated by William, been locked out of the back of the restaurant one night. She was in the back alley in the rain, shaking the door, trying to get the other children’s attention. William had pulled up slowly in his car, parking it behind her. _What’s wrong, Charlie?_ He stepped out of his idling car and made his way to the door, standing behind her as she waited for him to let her back in. Instead of a key, William produced a small knife. Quickly so not to lose his nerve, William whipped it around her neck and sliced the blade back along her throat, stepping back immediately as the blood poured out onto the rain-soaked door. It washed away quickly, and William climbed back into his car and drove away, leaving the girl to crawl the short distance that she could manage. She never made a noise. The children inside continued to enjoy the party, and still the music played.

William had thought that that would be enough for him. The score was now even. A life for a life. William had endured his grief, Henry now had to endure his. But something was wrong. William’s act had lacked a certain… sound. It had haunted him still, and he believed that the only way to relieve it was to replicate it. Perhaps the score was not yet even.

***

Months later, another opportunity had presented itself. The restaurant was crowded full of happy families, all watching the animatronics on the stage as they sang their songs. In between the songs, the animatronics would serve the customers by delivering pizza trays to the tables. It was the gimmick that the restaurant was famous for, and it never got old. The children were drawn to them and would follow them around, often running from one to the next as quickly as their excited little legs could take them. One suchchild was a six year old girl named Cassidy. Cassidy had been running after the animatronics with the other children but couldn’t keep up with them. It was apparent to William that she was not particularly favoured by the rest of her group and was in fact quite lonely. He could see that she was becoming upset.

William went into the back room. There they were, slumped next to each other. The old yellow suits. The former mascots of their company. He put on his old Bonnie suit and carefully made his way back out to the main area. Nobody noticed him. Nobody gave him a second look as he entered the kitchen and picked up a small plate of pizza and brought it back out. Nobody paid any extra attention to him as he approached Cassidy with the pizza that was specially made for her and knelt down to present it to her. He told her that he knew she was lonely and wanted to cheer her up. He told her that he was her special friend and that there was another friend waiting to meet her, one who was lonely, too. He walked away and beckoned her to the back room, towards the old Fredbear suit. 

She knew something was wrong when she saw the empty suit slouched against the wall. It no longer looked like a cartoon character, full of life. It was broken. William stifled any chance for her to scream as he covered her face with a wet cloth before laying her down quietly and closing the door. He then carefully opened up the Fredbear suit and placed her inside the torso. Curled up in the foetal position, she fit snugly inside it, sleeping like a baby. William closed the suit back up, sat down next to it and slouched like the other one, and waited.

It was almost like a game to him. Both of them were in old suits that were each as dangerous to wear as the other. The game was to wait and see whose would snap first. But he knew what the outcome would be. And he was patient. Instead of a snap, the first thing William heard from the Fredbear suit next to him was a soft weeping. She was awake, but she hadn’t yet moved. She knew where she was, could hear the music from the stage dampened through the walls. She knew that her parents were on the other side of those walls. Had they noticed that she was gone, yet?

Time passed, and soon they could hear people calling out her name, looking for her. William sat next to her, excitement brewing in him. Through her quiet sobs he could make out words. She was trying to call out. “It’s me!” I’m right here… It’s me!” But her calls didn’t escape the small room. Soon, William could hear her get more agitated and finally, she began to struggle against the suit. It was what he had been waiting for. His heart was pounding in his chest as he listened until suddenly, the Fredbear suit snapped loudly from the inside and gave a sudden jerk. It was over. He had replicated the sound that haunted him since that day, and now another family would know the pain that he had felt. 

Cassidy was never found. There was no trace of her in the restaurant and the best guess was that she had run away and had gotten lost. William had disposed of the Fredbear suit and only he knew where it remained.

And still, the music played.


	19. Part 4: Chapter 2

**2**

In 1987, Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza underwent a huge change. William was now the sole owner of the company, Henry having more or less vanished shortly after the death of his daughter, Charlotte. The restaurant was moved to a bigger location and was now populated with newer characters that were developed at Afton Robotics. The old four were, under William’s instructions, stored in the back area of the new location with the intention of being retrofitted with the new facial recognition technology for the new restaurant. The fact was, however, that those weren’t the only upgrades being done. William himself spent many days in the back room replacing their torsos with newer ones that were based on the old spring lock suits. These torsos, when wound up with a hand crank, would pull the internal parts into the sides creating a cavity large enough to fit a small child. William initially thought that he was done with this sort of thing, but in reality, how could he resist such a promise?

On first inspection, the old animatronics were the same as before and didn’t warrant a second glance. They looked just as William intended for them to look; like old scrap that was being used for spare parts. What better way to further tarnish Henry’s legacy by bastardising his machines? _Those_ machines were old and dangerous. William’s were brand new and state of the art.

The old yellow Bonnie suit, now referred to as ‘Springtrap’ by the engineers, was stored in there as well, so as not to appear out of place on the cameras. Nobody really went in there, except for perhaps the day guard doing his rounds and the supposed ‘technician’ who sometimes came and went. All of this went unnoticed by the popularity of the place, and the sheer number of patrons that came and went. The new characters were a technical marvel of the time and the lingering rumours of the franchise were forgotten.

William entered the restaurant regularly during the evenings of its first week and would wander the place looking for his next target. He would wear a security guard uniform to not look out of place and, knowing the algorithms of his new creations, to place suspicion on the guards simply from the correlation of a guard taking special notice of the child that would then later go missing. His face, of course, would not be recognised by their technology and the picture would be scrambled. He walked with confidence and purpose, impressed by his own work as he watched the shiny new animatronics interact with the patrons. They far exceeded anything Henry could have made. He only entered Kid’s Cove once, where there were toddlers pulling apart a Funtime Foxy as a group of little girls ran by laughing, their small ponytailed heads bobbing along as they went. In the far corner of the room was a large gift box. Its lid was lifted partially open and peering out from it like glowing pinpricks was a pair of eyes. It was a character that he hadn’t seen in a long time and didn’t quite remember the origins of, but it might have been one of Henry’s side projects. Its stare from across the room made his stomach drop as an image of Charlotte in the alleyway flashed before his eyes, and he knew immediately that these children were not to be touched.

He soon, however, found his next targets in one of the party rooms. William remembered the day well. It was June 26th, 1987. A Friday evening. A pair of boys named Gabriel and Jeremy aged about five and six were sitting in a corner of the room, away from the other children. William then went into the back room and climbed into his old Bonnie suit and returned to them with promises and a small plate of cake. Confident through practice, he gestured for them to follow him, luring them into the back room while the day guard, a new hire named Fritz Smith, was doing his rounds and was away from the camera monitor. William used a small radio device to temporarily interfere with the nearby electronics, scrambling the picture from the camera. All of the technology in the building was from Afton Robotics and his device could interfere with all of it. Just like last time, he rendered the boys unconscious and placed them gently into the newly fitted torsos. He placed Gabriel inside the old Freddy mascot and Jeremy inside Bonnie. He closed off the torsos and sealed the backs with a fitted plate that was not designed to come back off. Then, he sat down next to them and posed as a deactivated animatronic, turning the device off. Nothing that the camera might show would look unusual.

There he sat, just like last time, in a patient contest with the boys. A race to see whose spring locks would snap first. His heart pounding with excitement, William strained his ears as he listened for any sound from the old characters. Eventually, he heard the boys calling out to each other groggily, somehow knowing that the other was near. This was followed by the violent wet snaps of the locks as they gave way against their struggles against the metal parts, crushing the boys instantly until their bodies filled the empty spaces of the suits. It was done. Before moving, William used his device to create static on the camera again while he climbed out of his suit and placed it back where it was. He left the building, noticing the worried parents who were now looking up and down the corridor between the party rooms for their missing children.

***

William moved quickly, while there was still uncertainty and confusion, and the next morning he spied a young blonde girl playing alone on one of the arcade games. Her name was Susie. By loitering and listening, William learned through her parents that Susie’s dog had recently been hit and killed by a car, and that it had left her distraught. They buried the dog and had a little funeral and had now taken her to the new restaurant to help take her mind off of it. Though she seemed to be enjoying herself with the game, William could tell that it was still on her mind.

The animatronics were moving through the crowd of people, serving them with trays of food and interacting with them in a way that was almost humanlike. One of them, the ‘toy’ Chica had stared momentarily at William before looking away and moving on. Looking around, William saw the ‘toy’ Bonnie and Freddy looking at him from across the sea of heads, but he felt no danger from them. They would all ignore him. They would not remember his face. But they would remember the guard uniform. William left for the back room and climbed into his old, trusty suit.

He returned to her, wearing the yellow rabbit suit and stood behind her as she played. She glimpsed him in the screen’s reflection and turned around, uncertain of this unknown yellow character. He spoke to her. _He is not really dead. He’s over here. Follow me._ Again, he gestured for her to follow him, keeping a short distance between them. Again, he led her to the back room. Again, he scrambled the camera and took control of her. None of the excitement wearing off, he placed the small girl into the torso of the old Chica suit and sat down beside her. He wanted to be close to her. Right now, he was her only friend. Right now, he believed, he was the only person in the world who cared about her. In a way, she would be seeing her dog again soon.

The music from the building and the cheering screams from the excited children thrummed against the other side of the wall. They were all oblivious to what was happening only feet away from them. None of them cared. The excitement from the waiting was making William light-headed as his heart pounded in his chest and butterflies rustled in his stomach. Just when he thought he couldn’t take it anymore, he heard her cry out. She was scared, having just awoken in a dark, cramped place. She screamed, terrified. She felt the sides of the torso all jabbing into her and she had no room to move. She struggled. She felt something shift against her side, until suddenly, it snapped, the sound loud in her ear. Instant, hot pain surged through her, but only for a second. Before she even knew what had happened, the rest of the locks sprang free in quick succession, and a short series of wet snaps filled the small room. All was quiet, and the old Chica animatronic slumped slightly to the side.

William could have stopped there. He had been too hasty with this obsession of his and it was beginning to draw attention. But there was one empty animatronic left, and it would be a shame to not complete his collection. He had to act now in the midst of the public’s confusion.

That same afternoon, William was once again wandering the rooms of his restaurant in his guard uniform. This time he spotted a small boy who had a persistent twitch. There was something wrong with him, and he seemed jittery and scared. His father was a large, burly man who smelled of old drink. The boy was scared of him. The man was not enjoying himself and was scowling at the boy. Called him Fritz. Asked him why he wasn’t off playing with the other kids, especially after he has been begging his father to take him here. Said he was too scared to make any friends. William had found his last target.

Wearing the old Bonnie suit, William returned to the main dining area to find the man and the boy, Fritz, leaving through the front door as the man yelled at him for wasting his time. Said if he wasn’t going to go and play then they should just go home, the boy’s nervous tick making him twitch as they left towards their car. William noted the car’s licence plate number and it didn’t take him long to find the boy’s address. It was walking distance from the restaurant.

That night, the boy, Fritz, filled with shame at being too scared to play with the other children, had locked himself in his bedroom. His father wouldn’t like that when he got back home. Looking out the window, Fritz jumped at the sight of a figure just by the tree line of the property. A large, yellow bunny was standing there, waving at him. Beckoning him to come. The boy opened the window and climbed outside, shivering as it began to rain. The bunny told him that he was from the pizzeria and that he had seen him there. Said he felt bad that his father took him away early, and that he and all of his friends were sad that they didn’t get to play with him. But it was okay. They had planned a special slumber party for him. All he had to do was follow this yellow rabbit.

The boy followed, giddy with excitement as they walked between the trees to the big, new restaurant. The place was closed, and the bunny told him that they had to get in through a secret entrance. There was a guard there, and they had to make sure that he didn’t catch them, or he would be in trouble with his dad again. They approached a side door and the bunny opened it quietly, telling the boy to go in. The boy hesitated. Something was off. There was no joy from this place. He made a click with his mouth as his twitch returned. The bunny no longer looked friendly as it stared, unmoving, its eyes glinting behind the dark eye sockets. As the boy turned to leave, a wet cloth suddenly covered his face.

William carried the unconscious boy through the side door that led directly into the back room and placed him inside Foxy, the last animatronic. He would have his complete set. Just like the others, Fritz eventually woke to find himself tightly squeezed in a pitch-black space, with the immediate thought that he would never get out again. He struggled against the mechanical parts that seemed to shift against his movements, until he too, felt the hot, sharp pain of becoming one with the animatronic as the mechanical parts clamped down on him all at once. William had been with him the whole time. He knew the children better than anyone. He had been witness to all of their last moments, all of them reminding him of his youngest son who had died much the same way. Now, the score was even.

A few nights later, before his shift ended, the new night guard noticed something strange on the camera. The marionette, a tall black slender puppet animatronic with a white laughing mask as a face had left its box in Kid’s Cove. It was in the back room staring down at the old broken animatronics. The guard quickly checked the other cameras for the other toy animatronics. They had all been acting strangely as the nights went on. They seemed more and more determined to reach him and every night they got a little closer. He switched back to the back room and saw that the Marionette was gone. Over the next two shifts, he saw the old animatronics begin to stand. Some had even taken a few steps throughout the night, slowly making their way towards the corridor that led to him. Linked through their collective database, the animatronics remembered a man in a guard uniform taking interest in them, then him returning to them in a mascot costume. They couldn’t remember the face.

At the end of his first week, the guard requested to be moved to day shift. The night shift was filled by a young man named Jeremy Fitzgerald.


	20. Part 4: Chapter 3

**3**

The authorities never really suspected William other than Police Chief Clay Burke. It was only a gut feeling and there was no real evidence, but his suspicion of William never abated. Nevertheless, it didn’t make sense that William would risk the reputation of his own franchise, and these incidents had had a rapid effect on its customer turnover rate. An investigation was conducted, which William had assisted with, and camera footage showed a yellow rabbit appearing briefly in the restaurant leading the first two missing boys away. The data collected from the animatronics all showed the same information. A man in a guard uniform had been sighted loitering nearby just before each child was taken. William had altered the footage in the main database in the backroom to remove any images of himself in the building at those times.

The animatronics’ behaviour towards the night guards further supported the theory that the suspect was one of the security team that worked at the restaurant. The night guard before Jeremy was taken away for questioning and the disappearance of Cassidy at the previous restaurant was reopened and linked to the recent cases by their similarities and witness reports of a yellow rabbit character appearing shortly before she went missing. A security guard was charged with all five of the murders but walked free due to insufficient evidence. None of the five bodies were recovered.

Charlotte’s murder appeared to have no connection to the other disappearances and was deemed a random act of violence by an opportunistic murderer. Henry, who had been distraught, had disappeared shortly after her funeral, leaving William in charge of the company. All of the cases became cold and the franchise never fully recovered, having to move to a smaller location and reinstate the original four animatronics as the mascots. It was seen as a backwards step by the shareholders and many of them withdrew their support. It was just bad business.

William stood now in the main dining room of the empty building as it darkened in the setting sun and smiled down at the broken animatronics, knowing exactly what was sealed inside each torso. He remembered with fondness what others regarded with horror. He felt a connection with each of the families that had lost a child at the restaurant. After all, he had gone through the same thing once, and had publicly mourned with them. The night guard Mike Schmidt had almost worked it out. The instruction manual that was found underneath Freddy Fazbear that morning proved that. But it didn’t matter anymore. William had gotten what he wanted.

Something drew his attention and had snapped him out of his memories. A sound. One that sounded familiar and had shot a cold shiver up his spine. But he wasn’t sure of what it was until he heard it again.

_Click._

William looked around the dark room for the source of the sound, the pitch-black doorways seeming to loom closer and closer. He span slowly in his dull yellow circle of light from the spotlight above. The darkness of the silent, empty building seemed to press against him, and he felt a panic rising in him that he could not explain. That sound. Where had he heard that sound before? 

_Click._

Closer this time. A quiet shuffling came from the empty Pirate Cove, though there was nothing to see. No living thing remained in this old building apart from him. Not a soul. William scanned the room carefully from left to right, paying special attention on the long, black hallways and the empty arcade room. He thought he could see figures there in the dark. There were things in there, moving.

In his periphery, William thought he saw a small, pale face in one of the dark corridors, but when he looked at it directly, it was gone. As he stared into that patch of darkness, so did another face appear on the edge of his vision in the other doorway. Again, he tried to look at it directly, but it then vanished. A small face appeared just in front of the kitchen door, then another appeared in the arcade. William’s heart was racing, and his mouth was dry. He recognised these faces. They were getting closer each time he tried to get a look at them. One was at the front door. Again, that noise. _Click._ They had found him. He looked down at the mess of animatronic parts at his feet. Had he unknowingly freed them?

A voice in the darkness. A voice in his ear. “ _It’s me!_ _It’s us!”_ The faces were clearer now, appearing on the edge of the beam from the spotlight, flickering in and out of his periphery as he tried to look at each one directly. William trembled. He had never felt this sort of fear before. They were all here. They were angry. An idea. Could he hide? He turned and moved quickly into the backstage area, his hand fumbling along the wall for the light switch. He turned it on and was met with the grinning faces of Henry’s old creations, still on the shelves. Heart pounding, William approached the far wall, the one under the camera’s view and pulled the bench aside. He pressed on a panel on the wall and it loosened, allowing him to lift it out. He threw it aside and leaned into a small room that was hidden behind it. He found what he was looking for.

William dragged out the old yellow Bonnie suit by its feet, looking as though he was dragging a dead body. He had stored it here many years ago when the restaurant first relocated and didn’t expect to be unearthing it again. He turned it over onto its front and opened the back of it, exposing the rear cavity. After all this time, the internal parts were still pulled aside and held back with their locks. William climbed into the suit, sliding his arms and legs between the parts. They had found him, and he was desperate to get away from them. It was his hope that they feared the suit. It was his hope that they feared the appearance that he took on the days that he lured them.

With the suit firmly on, the parts all locked in place, William turned towards the doorway and looked maniacally at the faces that had gathered there. The children backed away, their courage faltering at the sight of him. With renewed confidence, William stepped out into the main dining room again, grinning inside his mask at the retreating children. He stood triumphantly in the circle of yellow light, dust particles floating slowly around him. The whispering had ceased, the clicking had stopped. They still feared him. He was still in charge.

William laughed. He threw his head back and laughed theatrically, fully embracing the role of the masked serial killer. The things in the dark feared _him!_ He still saw the faces flickering in his periphery, cowering away. He took a lurching step towards them, intending to feint them, when something went wrong. He had stepped too heavily with his right leg and had shaken the spring locks out of place. A series of loud snaps echoed throughout the building, drowned out quickly by his screams. The internal parts of the entire right leg had snapped back into place, crushing and destroying his leg between them. He fell hard onto his left knee, causing much the same reaction again in that leg. Again, the spring locks snapped open and again, William screamed into the empty building. He looked up at the faces and saw only wicked smiles. They had fooled him.

Pain seared up his body like hot knives, and his now useless legs splayed out beneath him as he fell back into a sitting position, jolting the suit once again. But it didn’t snap. Not just yet. William sat there on the floor, holding himself up with his arms behind him. His useless legs lay in front of him, dark blood pooling out from the joins. His blood. Only a few seconds ago, he was in perfect health. Now, in an instant caused by one simple mistake, he was permanently broken and would never walk again. He would never be able to undo it, the moment slipping further away with each second. His breathing heavy, he looked through the eyeholes out at the pale, small faces in the darkness. One of them looked fierce. It was the last victim, the boy Fritz. The one he has placed inside the old Foxy animatronic. The animatronic that was always twitchy. The animatronic that now lay before him in pieces with the others. Looking at his legs, the resemblance between himself and them was undeniable.

The boy, Fritz, suddenly leaped towards him, launching himself through the air with all of the rage of the others behind him. William could feel it. All of their pain. All of their anger. All of their sorrow for their families that they were stolen away from. And soon, he would feel exactly what they all had felt. But it would not be quick for him.

William raised his arms as the boy leaped at him and fell backwards onto the ground. That was his final mistake. As the torso struck the tiled ground, the jolt that ran through it shook the old, rusty locks. They sprung open, one after the other, and the internal parts of the old animatronic suit that Henry had one designed for him forced their way through his ribs and vital organs, locking themselves into their long-awaited proper positions. One after the other, he heard the dull, squelching snap and felt the hot stabs of the old metal parts as they ran their way up his sides. The nerve endings in his brain were aflame, searing behind his eyes as the air was forced out of his lungs and he could no longer scream. The arms of the suit followed the rest, snapping down from the shoulders to his hands.

Laying there in the dark empty building in the centre of the ceiling light, William waited in agony for the final locks to let go. The parts within the old rabbit head were still held back by their spring locks. As he lay there, his body broken and crushed, somewhere in his mind he was aware that his brain would survive for quite a few more minutes yet. He couldn’t speak, he couldn’t breathe. There were no lungs left for him to draw air into. All he could do was move his eyes, looking up into the ceiling light that was glaring down onto him. As his vision faded, the darkness of tunnel vision overcoming his perception, he saw the five faces creep over him. They were there for him for his final moment. They were his only witness. It was slow, and they relished in it.

William Afton died alone in the dark, crushed inside an old suit, not knowing if anyone would ever find him. The rage that had filled the children was fading and as they left, they were finally at peace. The franchise had crumbled. The restaurant was empty. The killer was dead. The score was even.


	21. Part 5: Final Chapter

** Part Five: Jen **

**1**

A car pulled up to the blacked-out building, its headlights illuminating the red brick wall in a narrowing beam of light as it slowed to a stop. Jen was sitting in the driver’s seat and was staring at the front door of the building, her hands still gripping the steering wheel. There was a dull glow of light from inside, the main lights kept off to not draw attention to the building. He was already here. She climbed out of the car and closed the door quietly, watching the building for any movement. Everything was still. She peered down the side alley and saw a rental truck, its windows now frosted over, parked halfway down it near where she usually parked. Clearly, he didn’t want people to know he was here.

Shivering in the cold night air, Jen approached the front door of the closed Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, knowing that it would be for the last time. She had been with the company since its inception, and this same walk would be the longest of her life. To most people, she was just Jen the cleaning lady. A silent brooding woman who kept to herself and had no time for anyone, especially the night guards who never lasted long enough to make it worth getting to know.

A scarcely known fact about Jen was that she was Henry’s sister, and that she had been a major investor in the company that he had created. She had been there for many of the big corporate decisions between Henry and William and had her fair share of influence over the company as a whole. Since the death of her niece Charlotte, Jen had to put on a brave face for her brother as he mourned, and for herself when he himself left not long after. She blamed herself for the girl’s death. The Marionette, which she now kept in her house since the bad times, should have been protecting her.

William had bought out Henry’s share of the company and had assumed majority control over it, leaving Jen to fade away into the background, watching as he changed everything. For a while, she lived life of quiet wealth as the company boomed and her shares swelled. The company’s brief success felt bittersweet to her. It felt like a jab at the memory of her brother, whose vision it had been from the start. It felt as though William had proven him wrong and that his ideas were better. Nevertheless, the company was doing very well. There were talks of it becoming a chain, with locations being planned across the state. Then, the bad times happened and the company all but crumbled. The original mascots, the ones her brother had designed and had built himself were to be put back on the stage at the smaller location.

Jen didn’t need to work as a cleaner at the restaurant. She had never struggled financially. She did it to keep an eye on the animatronics. They were the last remaining part of her brother and she had sworn to herself that she would care for them. Over the years, she had begun to feel like they were her children. Through befriending Fritz, the longest lasting security guard with the company, Jen learned about the quirks that the animatronics had developed over time and began to understand them. Therefore, she knew to be out of the building before midnight. Apart from her healthy respect for them, she was never fearful of them. Not like Fritz seemed to be at times.

***

The door handle was cold in her hand as she pressed the door open and stepped into the dark room. Her eyes were drawn to the circle of light on the dining room floor and the scene that greeted her filled her with grief. The animatronic characters, Henry’s animatronic characters, were strewn about in a scattered pile. Their limbs looked to be thrown about in violent poses, the detached heads frozen in silent screams as though someone had taken out their anger and hatred on them. She stepped closer to the scene and spotted the yellow bunny lying on its back not far from the pieces.

She recognised it immediately as the old Bonnie suit. Though the techs had referred to it as Springtrap for more years than it had been in use, Jen had never forgotten the suit that her brother had made for his business partner William. William, who now lay dead with his own blood pooled around him clotting, his pulverised insides partially forced through the gaps between the joints of the suit. She circled him slowly, staring down at the open eyes of the still intact head behind the large eyeholes. How foolish he looked.

The swell of feelings she felt right now was not for him, but for her brother’s animatronics. She had intended to take them back with her herself, though she hadn’t thought too much about how to move the heavy things. At the least, she just wanted to see them up on the stage one more time. As they were when they were first created. As they should have still been. But she was too late to save them from the man who had always quietly loathed the man who built them. William might not have paid her much attention, but Jen knew far more about the goings on of the restaurant than she let on.

She knew. Somehow, she _knew_ that it was him behind it all. The missing children, her brother’s disappearance, the one behind little Charlie’s murder. The slow, steady corruption of the company that she once helped run. She knew that he was clever, cunning, and always a few steps ahead. There was never any proof of what she knew, but that little smirk of his was often proof enough for her. She looked at the open door to the brightly lit backstage area. She also knew -William would have been surprised- about the little hiding spot for the old Springtrap suit.

Rage slowly seething within her, she stepped over the dead man in the malfunctioned suit and grabbed its wrists. She heaved and pulled it back towards the small room, the pool of blood now streaking across the tiled floor. With some effort, she lifted him back into the small compartment behind the wall. Before resealing it, Jen looked the dead man in his dull eyes, the light in the small room giving the rabbit face an eery shadow and spoke to him.

“May you never escape that damn suit. May you never be found. May you burn.”

Barely containing her rage, her hands trembled as she replaced the panel and hid the dead man in the wall. He would never have a proper burial, and for Jen, that was good enough. She returned to the main dining room and sat down on her knees in between the four piles of parts. It was silent, and for the first time, the place felt empty. Really empty. She had been on her own with them many times and never actually felt alone. Not with them. Now, with the parts scattered, ready to be trashed, she felt nothing from them. She picked up Freddy’s head and looked into his eyes.

She had always felt a quiet anguish within these characters, one that was quelled by her caring presence. It was no longer there. Jen placed the head back onto the ground, closed her eyes, and began to shake, her body thrumming like a tension cable. She wept. Outside, for the first time that year, the soft snow had begun to drift gently onto the empty parking lot.

** The End **


End file.
